Old West glossary, no. 29

Here’s another set of terms garnered from early western novels. Definitions were discovered in various online dictionaries, as well as searches in Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, Dictionary of the American West, The New Encyclopedia of the American West, The Cowboy Dictionary, The Cowboy Encyclopedia, The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology, The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms, and The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

These are from Frank Lewis Nason’s To the End of the Trail about gold fever in Colorado; and Elizabeth Higgins’ Out of the West, about a man exiled by his father to a small town in Nebraska. Once again, I struck out on a few. If anyone has a definition for “put bread around one’s pie,” “tight leg and pull up,” “reversed pencil,” “pull gosling, pull grass,” “stamped china,” or “dancehall roller,” leave a comment below.

back-firing = running someone out of the country. “‘They ain’t only one thing’ll stop him.’ Tough Nut looked cunningly suggestive…‘Say, back-firin’. Savey?’” Frank Lewis Nason, To the End of the Trail.

base burner = furnace or stove in which the fuel is contained in a hopper or chamber and is fed to the fire as the lower layer is consumed. “I am going to buy a base-burner for the parlor, and have a drum put in its pipe in the room above, and we won’t have to sleep off the kitchen.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

Bertha M. Clay = a writer of love stories and romances for English working-class audiences and Street & Smith’s readers in America. “On a cherry-stained writing-desk lay a novel by Bertha M. Clay.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

Bloomingdale = a private hospital for the care of the mentally ill founded by New York Hospital, located in Morningside Heights and built c1820. “If I spoke all the truth I know and acted upon it, my friends would have me now in Bloomingdale.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

blow = inform, confess. “‘Did the Big Swede blow on me?’ he asked excitedly.” Frank Lewis Nason, To the End of the Trail.

bobtail = worthless, a term from poker. “She ain’t goin’ bobtail. That’s straight.” Frank Lewis Nason, To the End of the Trail.

box coat = a coat designed to hang loosely from the shoulders. “The breeze carried a chill, and he drew about her the folds of his box-coat.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

cab = baby carriage. “She took the baby out in his cab to give him the sun and air.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

combing = a straightening out. “I gave him a combing just now; but it’s no good, I think.” Frank Lewis Nason, To the End of the Trail.

copperhead = a northerner with southern sympathies; against Lincoln's war policy. “Colonel Thompson had served in the Union army, but he was a copperhead. To sum it up, he hated the Republicans on general principles.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

cough up = reveal, confess. “The way you made us cough up about Dead Horse! The Big Swede chaws her teeth every time she hears Dead Horse.” Frank Lewis Nason, To the End of the Trail.

double-header = using two railway locomotives to pull a long or heavy train. “The mail-trains dashing through and the leather bags rolling in the dust behind them now possessed a fascination for Frank, and, with the rest of his fellow-creatures, he would marvel over the cause for a ‘double-header.’” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

Bloomer dress, 1850s

down on/to one’s uppers = very poor; reference to shoes from which heel and sole have been worn to nothing. “He made a little money, but he didn’t know enough to keep it…Got down to his uppers.” Frank Lewis Nason, To the End of the Trail.

dress reform = a movement in support of clothing more “rational” and comfortable than fashions of the time, e.g. the Bloomer dress. “‘I dare say,’ said Miss Crowley, ‘that his wife wears spectacles, believes in dress-reform or woman’s rights, or she has six babies.’” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

dressing case = a box or case fitted with all the toilet articles necessary for dressing oneself, arranging one's hair, etc. “In a curtained alcove was a French dressing-case that Mrs. Suffridge said was over a hundred years old.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

Dressing case, 1840-1860

forfeits = a parlor game in which a judge requires the owner of a personal item to perform an act or stunt to retrieve it. “Every mother in the house knew what forfeits and post-office meant; some of them were watching the players at their peculiar merriment.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

give the mitten = to break up with or reject a lover. “You are going to give me the mitten, and make me the laugh of the whole Junction, and all the girls will say that Frank Field jilted me.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

going tick = buying on credit. “They get terrible behind, goin’ tick for all they must have.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

hunch = to push or lunge forward. “The whole country about hunched theirselves to get the sugar-factory here, thinking to sell a pile of beets.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

ingrain carpet = a reversible carpet made of wool dyed before weaving and having a similar design on each side, with the colors reversed. “It had been Edith’s intention to take their household effects to Washington—the folding-bed, the ingrain carpet, and the parlor cook.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

Laura Jean Libbey, 1898

Laura Jean Libbey = a popular writer of sensational romances for women, with serialized novels in publications like the New York Ledger. “The works of Mrs. Holmes and Laura Jean Libby intermingled on the book-shelves with the histories of all nations and bound volumes of Harper’s Weekly and the Scientific American.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

lifter = (Mining) a shot hole drilled near the floor when tunneling. “‘The boys is doin’ well. There goes the lifter, an’ the powder is workin’!” Frank Lewis Nason, To the End of the Trail.

Mary J. Holmes = a popular writer of love stories and romances for Street & Smith, hailed by them as the “Queen of the Human Heart.” “The works of Mrs. Holmes and Laura Jean Libby intermingled on the book-shelves with the histories of all nations and bound volumes of Harper’s Weekly and the Scientific American.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

mull = a soft thin muslin used in dresses and for trimmings. “She went back to the other clothes, the weblike mulls, the soft nainsooks, and the embroidered, silk-threaded flannels.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

nainsook = a fine, soft cotton fabric, originally from the Indian subcontinent. “She went back to the other clothes, the weblike mulls, the soft nainsooks, and the embroidered, silk-threaded flannels.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

nun’s veiling = a thin, plain-woven, worsted fabric, originally for nuns’ veils. “Since old maid Davis made over that blue nun’s veilin’ of hers it looks ’most as good as new.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

over the road = in jail. “‘Why don’t you put them over the road?’ There was revenge in Ingalls’s eyes.” Frank Lewis Nason, To the End of the Trail.

parlor cook = a stove used for both heating and cooking. “Together they would enter the kitchen and Frank would prepare the parlor cook for the morning’s firing.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

Henry George, 1865

Progress and Poverty = a treatise on the cyclical nature of an industrial economy, explaining why poverty exists despite advances in technology, by Henry George, published 1879. “Armed with quotations from Progress and Poverty, the man who had for years worked on one of the Hays’s farms at a primary took from the Congressman and ex-Governor his most important precinct.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

sleeper = a railroad tie. “He led Clara to some sleepers which lay piled below the railroad embankment near by.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

spit the fuse = make something happen; from mining, lighting the fuse of an explosive with the flame of a candle or match; . “‘Say, now!’ Tough Nut looked embarrassed. ‘You’re spittin’ the fuse all right.’” Frank Lewis Nason, To the End of the Trail.

stock watering = a form of securities fraud in which stock is sold at a much-inflated value. “They learned of stock-watering, of bond-issues. It was all strange and new, and hard to understand.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

stuff = to tease, tell lies, fool, hoax. “It’s a likely story. The boss was stuffing you, or some one stuffed the boss.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

Emma D.E.M. Southworth, c1860

The Hidden Hand = a wildly popular novel set in antebellum South by best-selling author Emma D.E.N. Southworth (1819-1899), originally serialized in the New York Ledger from 1859 to 1883, with numerous stage productions. “I’ve seen ‘Uncle Tom’ and ‘The Hidden Hand,’ but ‘Ten Nights in a Bar-room’s’ finer than them.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

tick shop = a store where goods can be bought on credit. “He would be back in time to settle. But the unfeeling man of pork and beans ‘wa’n’t keepin’ no damned tick shop.’” Frank Lewis Nason, To the End of the Trail.

truck = an undercarriage with four to six wheels pivoted beneath the end of a railroad car. “Over the ice-coated foot-boards of the jostling cars the brakeman hurried, running and jumping, a slip meaning mutilation beneath the grinding trucks.” Elizabeth Higgins, Out of the West.

turkey = a hold-all or bundle carried by an itinerant worker or vagrant. “You pack your turkey and get down to his ranch before sun-up to-morrow.” Frank Lewis Nason, To the End of the Trail.

Source: The American Women’s Dime Novel Project

Image credits: Wikimedia Commons

Fence-line, illustration by Anton Fisher, from Henry Herbert Knibbs, Overland Red, 1914

Coming up: James Stewart, Maureen O'Hara, The Rare Breed (1966)