killcalf
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
See also: kill-calf
English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Noun[edit]
killcalf
- (obsolete) A butcher.
- 1628, John Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life[1], page 35:
- With any summe you are afraid to lose / But in the night, but then take heed of those / Base Padding Rascalls, for their kill-calfe law / I am not priuy to, I neuer saw / Them, nor their actions, then I cannot show / How to preuent the thing I doe not know.
- 1630, John Taylor, “Jack A Lent: His Beginning and Entertainment”, in Works of John Taylor, the Water Poet[2], London: Reeves and Turner, published 1876, pages 12–13:
- Sir Francis Drake's ship at Deptford, my Lord Mayor's barge, and divers secret and unsuspected places, and there they make private shambles with kill-calf cruelty, and sheep slaughtering murder, to the abuse of Lent, the deceiving of the informers, and the great grief of every zealous fishmonger.
- (obsolete, figuratively) A violent person.
Related terms[edit]
References[edit]
- John S[tephen] Farmer; W[illiam] E[rnest] Henley, compilers (1896) “killcalf”, in Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present. […], volume IV, [London: […] Harrison and Sons] […], →OCLC, page 106.