[Ads-l] "stand (it) pat" (1868)

[Ben Zimmer]

My new Wall Street Journal column is on the history of "standing pat"
from draw poker to modern politics:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-origins-of-standing-pat-1474038427

If paywalled, you can come in through Google:

https://goo.gl/2zCi2u

I cite an 1868 Chicago Tribune article (describing a poker game at a
saloon in Davisville, Calif.) that has "stand it pat," where "it"
refers to a player's hand:

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Chicago Tribune, Oct. 15, 1868, p. 2, col. 6 [ProQuest]
As we stand looking on, one of the players gets a strong hand and
stands it pat. [...]
What could be said in defense of a people who would tolerate in their
midst a creature in the form of a man, who will sit playing draw poker
through all the long summer holy Sabbath day, covered with flies and
sweating like a coal-heaver, and only raise his opponent five dollars,
when he has four queens in his hand and the other fellow stood his
hand pat?
-----

Earliest I've found for "stand pat" without an object is from 1869,
though it looks like it was already getting extended beyond poker to
mean "stand firm":

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Montana Post (Virginia City), Apr. 2, 1869, p. 1, col. 1 [Newspapers.com]
General Pat E. Connor is the prominent candidate for Governor of Utah.
We adopt the Major's policy in an Indian muss--"Stand Pat and holler
'how.'"
-----

Here it is in 1870 in a poker context:

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Daily National Republican (Washington, DC), Feb. 11, 1870, p. 4, col.
3  [GenealogyBank]
Accordingly the lieutenant proceeded to the place indicated, where a
nice little game was going on, and "taking a hand," stood "pat," with
a "flush of five clubs."
-----

(These antedate OED2's first cite of 1882.)

--bgz

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