petyush's definitions

up the pole

phr. 1 (late 19C+) insane. 2 1920s +) pregnant (cf. UP THE SPOUT).

- Is she up the pole ?
- Better ask Seymour that. (James Joyce:Ulysses,PICADOR,1998, p.23)

by Petyush March 27, 2005

Jacky Tar

Jacky Tar / jack tar: n. 1 (late 18C+) a sailor.

They believe in rod, ... and Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who was conceived of unholy boast, born of the fighting navy ... (James Joyce: Ulysses, PICADOR, 1997, p. 314).

by Petyush March 27, 2005

rum

adj (dated Br inf) peculiar; odd: He's a rum character (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD).

Rum how he'd had a feeling it was coming, all the same, he thought, still staring into the blurred plain. (John le Carré: The Honurable Schoolboy, Coronet Books, 2000, p.55).

by Petyush March 27, 2005

weeds n. pl.

(1950s +) (US sl.) clothes

... and to see him in his round spectacles and his civil servant weeds, you would think it was he ... who deserved the tradename ’mole’.
John le Carré: The honourable schoolboy, Coronet Books, Hodder and Stuoghton, 2000, p.57).

by Petyush March 27, 2005

club/knock the stuffing out of sg

(infml, originally NY slang): make sb. feeble, weak or demoralized

“Talk quickly – those fellows are clubbing the stuffing out of Union Pacific.”
O’Henry: 100 Selected Stories, Wordsworth Classics, 199, p.74.

by Petyush March 29, 2005

rotto

adj.1920 (Anglo-Irish) 1 drunk. 2 rotten, e.g. rotto with money (cf. LOUSY adj.; STINKING adj.)

- Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with money.
- Is she up the pole?
(James Joyce:Ulysses,PICADOR,1998, p.23)

by Petyush March 27, 2005

fogey

Fogey/fogy /fougi/ sl. (early 18C+, orig. Scot) old-fashioned, stuck-in-the mud.
Person with old fashioned ideas which he is unwilling to change: Come to the disco and stop being such an old fogey!

You think me an old fogeyand an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O’Connel’s time. I remember the famine. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O’Connel did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things. (James Joyce, Ulysses. Penguin Books,1992. p. 38)

by Petyush September 14, 2005