[Ads-l] _piece_ interdating; _it_ interdating; _jaw_ "cheek," pl. "face"

[Jonathan Lighter]

1953: OED (buried in 9b).

1682, in V. de Sola Pinto & A. E. Rodway _The Common Muse_ (London:
Chatto & Windus, 1957) 425: Do'st think it lawfull for a Piece/ A
silly Foal to Bugger?

(You read that right.)

ca1890? _The Stag Party_ (N.p., n.d.) 219: She was an arrant whore and
had her heart set on a piece from Joseph.

The unpublished HDAS files exist only as digitized images of 3x5
cards, and I regret that I can't make 'em large enough to read in full
my camped handwriting from ca1970. The book's title may be _A Slave to
Duty_, by Octave Thanet, 1898. I do guarantee that the passage is
real, however:


ca1900 [19th C. handwriting defacing NYPL copy of (illegible) : The
guests began to take on board so much liquor that I thought it best to
leave the table with my wife, and get a piece aboard the Coquette. I
therefore arose and stated that I was compelled to retire on account
of my wife's [illegible] health, and for a wonder Captain Bluff made
no objection.

JL


On Sat, Jun 11, 2016 at 5:06 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Southwestern Reporter, Volume 62, May 6--June 10, 1901, Page 766
> West Publishing Co. St. Paul: 1901
> Prosecutrix testified, in substance, that on December 29, 1899, she started
> with appellant from a party to her house. They left the party about
> midnight. "[The] buggy turned west. ... He then asked me to kiss him. I
> told him I would not do it.; that I was not that kind of a girl. ... He
> then asked me if I loved him. I told him I loved everybody. He then asked
> me to  'let him have a _piece_.'  I told him he ought to be ashamed of
> himself. ... He stopped the horse. ... He unbuttoned my drawers ... and
> pulled them down in front. ... I begged him to quit, and let me alone, and
> tried to shame him. He said I had just as well give up, as he was going to
> take _it_ anyway. He used great force and handled me so roughly as to hurt
> me."
>
> ibid., Page 781
> It is true that she does tell defendant in the ou[t]set, when the
> proposition is made to her  'to let him have a _piece_,'  that 'he ought to
> be ashamed of himself,' (a very proper thing for any girl who knows the
> meaning of the term  'let me have a _piece_'  to do). She did not do what a
> great many other virtuous girls probably would have done,--either slapped
> his _jaws_, expressed or feigned an ignorance of the meaning of the
> term,--but by her reply to defendant immediately gave him to understand
> that she fully knew the meaning of the term, without the least resenting
> it."
>
>
> She managed to get away and he was sentenced to five years in prison for
> attempted rape. The above is taken from the record of his appeal, Barnett
> v. State [of Texas!]. He lost his appeal by a vote of 2-1. Amazing! There
> were no witnesses, so that it he was she-said-he said. On Law & Order, the
> ADA would have refused to prosecute.
> --
> - Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



-- 
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