crazy/insane gradation

[victor steinbok]

A small addition. MW-OL has the date at 1836 (same entry). I could not
quite track it back to 1836, but here's one from 1837:

Headline: From the New York Gazette. the Clockmaker; Article Type: News/Opinion
Paper: Southern Patriot, published as The Southern Patriot; Date:
06-24-1837; Volume: XXXVII; Issue: 5823; Page: [2/2]; Location:
Charleston, South Carolina

> From the New York Gazette.
> THE CLOCKMAKER.
> or the sayings and doings of Sam Slick.
> As soon as it was settled, father drives off to the stables, and then returns mounted, with a red silk pocket handkerchief tied round his head, and colt a looking like himself, as proud as a nabob, chockful of spring, like the wire cend of a bran new pair of trouser gallusses--one said that's a plaguy nice old looking colt that old feller has after all--that horse will show fair play for it, says a third--and I heard one feller say, I guess that's a reg'ler yankee trick, a complete take in.

VS-)

On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 5:32 PM, Robin Hamilton
<robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com> wrote:

> Looks as if Wilson's dead right on this one.  No galluses in the OED, but
> this from (online) Webster:
>
> ____________________________
>
>  galluses definition
>
> gal·luses (gal'?s iz)
>
> plural noun
> Informal suspenders; braces
>
> Etymology: < gallus, dial. var. of gallows
>
> Webster's New World College Dictionary Copyright © 2009 by Wiley Publishing,
> Inc., Cleveland, Ohio.
> Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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