Citations:gimp

English

Etymology 3

Adjective

		15??		1706 1719 17?? 1783	1826 1878
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

1. (dated, Scotland and N England) Neat; trim; delicate; slender; handsome; spruce; elegant.
   • 15??, King James V, Christ's Kirk on the Green, collected in Watson's Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems, page 1; alternate source, with footnote regarding gimp

     Of all these maidens mild as mead, / was none so gimp as Gillie,

   • 1706, Robert Mylne, A Song on the Treaty of Union, collected in A Book of Scotish Pasquils by James Maidment, page 367

     Now, the Lord bless the gimp one-and-thirty, / If they prove not Traytors in fact;

   • 1719 (?), Elizabeth Wardlaw (?), Hardyknute, collected in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry by Thomas Percy, page 815

     Her girdle shaw'd her middle gimp, / And gowden glist her hair.

   • 17??, Traditional, Clerk Colvill, collected by Francis James Child in Child's Collected Ballads, (#42), Google Books

     A belt about her middle gimp, / Which cost Clark Colven crowns fifteen:

   • c. 1783, Traditional, The Lass of Roch Royal, collected by Francis James Child in Child's Collected Ballads, (#76), Google Books

     An wha will lace my middle gimp / Wi the new made London ban?

   • 1826, Jane & Anna Maria Porter, Tales Round a Winter Hearth, page 57

     Often were they heard boasting her "sma' gimp waist..."

   • 1878, James Logie Robertson, Poems, "A Ballad", page 105

     'Tis she! The very face appears; / The form sae gimp and genty; / The maid I left o' twenty years / Is still a maid o' twenty!