like sixty

English

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Adverb

like sixty (not comparable)

1. Quickly, easily or briskly.
   • 1856, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, page 191:

     But there's these poor, miserable trash have children like sixty; and there's folks living in splendid houses, dying for children, and can't have any.

   • 1873, Edward Eggleston, The Mystery of Metropolisville, page 119:

     In transcribing them, I have inserted one or two apostrophes, for the poet always complained that though he could spell like sixty, he never could mind his stops.

   • 1932, John Dos Passos, 1919, page 51:

     That Maine water was so cold that he came to like sixty sore as a pup and wanting to fight Joe.

   • 1965, Richard S. Prather, Meandering Corpse, page 91:

     I charged at those trees going like sixty — at least sixty, whatever it means — and was well in among them when a strange thing happened.

   • 1974, Margaret Laurence, The Diviners, page 28:

     Some kids still can't read yet. But they are dumb, dumb-bells, dumb bunnies. Morag can read like sixty. Sometimes she doesn't let on in school, though.

   • 1995, James P. Blaylock, All the Bells on Earth, page 269:

     Maybe the truth was that all of them — himself, the kids, Uncle Henry, Mrs. Biggs, even Argyle — were bailing like sixty, trying to stay afloat in their sorry little tubs.

References

• John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary