Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A kind of drinking-vessel.
- noun A low menial of either sex. Ford's Fancies, i. 3, note.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Prov. Eng. A shallow drinking bowl.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun UK, dialect A shallow drinking bowl.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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"So we got here just as the taxi was whiskin 'his nibs away ----"
A Little Miss Nobody Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall Amy Bell Marlowe
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Soon as ever I shook up the bolster an 'settled down for another try, I see'd myself whiskin' back and forth over this here piece
Shining Ferry Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903
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I've been up tin thousand feet on a mountain, an 'they seemed so near that I kept whiskin' thim off me nose as I lay there on me back, but they wasn't anny larger thin they were on th 'sthreet-level.
Observations By Mr. Dooley Finley Peter Dunne 1901
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In a while it began to be rayther hard wark, he darn't let t'kite goa, an 'ther wor nowt handy to tee it too, soa he thowt his best plan' ud be to pull it in, but just then a thowt struck him, as he saw Testy trottin 'off whiskin his tail, an' he went after him.
Yorksher Puddin' A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the Pen of John Hartley John Hartley 1877
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An 'fain wad I haud air an' watter in motion aboot me, an 'sae serve my en' -- whether by waggin 'wi' my wings or whiskin 'wi' my tail.
Sir Gibbie George MacDonald 1864
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“summat” to eat and drink, being the respectable relies of a gammon of bacon, and a whole whiskin, or black pot of sufficient double ale.
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_whole whiskin, _ or black pot of sufficient double ale.
The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete Walter Scott 1801
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o 'Dawdles' wayscoit, he tummeld a backard summerset, an 'ligged him daan i' th 'middle o' th 'rooad, an' th 'cauf laup'd ovver th' wall o 't'other side an' gallop'd away, whiskin its tail abaat as if it wanted to cast it.
Yorksher Puddin' A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the Pen of John Hartley John Hartley 1877
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a ` ` summat '' to eat and drink, being the respectable relies of a gammon of bacon, and a whole whiskin, or black pot of sufficient double ale.
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Begorrah, if ye don't look out sharp, Misther Sharp, ye'll hev the divvle whiskin 'ye off wid his tail, sure, fur thet same whisky ye're talkin' of! "
Young Tom Bowling The Boys of the British Navy John B. [Illustrator] Greene
chained_bear commented on the word whiskin
"A shallow brown drinking bowl."
September 7, 2008
reesetee commented on the word whiskin
It has to be brown, huh?
September 8, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word whiskin
I guess. *shrugs*
OED lists 1 definition as: "A shallow kind of drinking-vessel." No brown mentioned. And 2 as: "A pander." Both are obsolete; the first is of northern dialect as well.
Possibly it's a certain kind of cheap pottery, which would have made it consistently colored.
September 8, 2008
reesetee commented on the word whiskin
Oh, that makes sense. I was wondering why the definition would include a specific color, but the pottery thing may explain that.
September 8, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word whiskin
Well, that's just me making a wild guess based on 10-year-old (at least), very minimal study of eighteenth-century pottery. There was a kind of cheap pottery—redware? cheaply-glazed stoneware?—that was dark brown. (Perhaps origins of "Little Brown Jug" as well?)
I found this site which offers a history of American pottery, which I didn't read terribly thoroughly. Also there's a great (if mostly unrelated) book called The Arcanum, the one by Janet Gleeson (not the novelist Thomas Wheeler), if you're that into the subject. :)
September 8, 2008
bilby commented on the word whiskin
*waves his wand and permits reesetee to have any colour bowl he wants*
September 8, 2008
reesetee commented on the word whiskin
Have that book, c_b. Thanks.
September 8, 2008