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 30, 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

stew

v. to study hard. (See: Cassell's Dictionary of Slang).

- Going over next week to stew? You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily?
- Yes.(James Joyce:Ulysses,PICADOR,1998, p.23)

by Petyush March 27, 2005

smooth one's / sb's (ruffled) feathers

to make oneself (or somebody else) feel less irritated or offended

Lacon was no fool, and the Cousin's wrath just when everyone was trying to smooth their feathers was a thing to be avoided at any cost.
John le Carré: The Honourable Schoolboy.CORONET BOOKS, Hodder & Stoughton, 2000. p. 63.

by Petyush April 11, 2005

miching

n (obviously Irish school slang of the 1910s): staying away from school without permission, playing hookey, playing truant.Eg.: We often planned a miching for the whole day if we did not want to do our preparations for the classes.

With Leo Dillon and a boy named Mahony I planned a day's miching. (James Joyce: Dubliners, Penguin Books, 1998, p.20).

by Petyush March 27, 2005