Look Wild
George Thompson
george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Sat Oct 13 01:35:40 UTC 2012
*Look Wild*. All persons having unsettled Accounts with the subscriber of
six months standing, are requested to call and settle the same forth-with,
and save cost. T. B. Whitmarsh. Delaware Gazette (Delhi, N. Y.), April 6,
1820, p. 3, col. 3.
This means "be warned" -- pay up or I'll sue you -- and I suppose I can
follow the chain of thought that connects a debtor with a hunted animal,
but it's an odd expression, and I don't see anything parallel in the OED.
Whitmarsh was a doctor and druggist, by the way.
GAT
--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
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