Citations:mammock

English citations of mammock

Noun

• 1794, F. L. Count Stolberg, Travels in Holland, Switzerland, Italy and Sicily., page 539:

  […] but, should any one have the rashness to betray rebellious designs, we have sworn to tear him into as many pieces as we are persons, and we will each smoak a mammock of him in our pipes."

• 1829, William Blackwood, “Dibdin's Sea Songs; or, Scenes in the Gum-room.”, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine:

  The studding-sail server for his hammock,
  With the clue-lines he bought him his call,
  While ensigns and Jacks in a mammock
  He sold to buy trinkets for Poll.

• 1853, Robert Snow, Notes and Queries: A medium of inter-communication:

  Is not the phrase a corruption of beaten to a mammock, to a piece, to a scrap, to a fragment? […] The Gloucestershire peasants frequently use the word mammock, which they pronounce "mommock".

Verb

• 1623, William Shakespeare, Coriolanus:

  I saw him run after a gilded butterfly; and when he caught it, he let it go again; and after it again; and over and over he comes, and up again; catched it again: or whether his fall enraged him, or how ’twas, he did so set his teeth and tear it; O! I warrant, how he mammocked it!

• 1641, John Milton, Of Reformation:

  to keep off the profane touch of the Laicks, whilst the obscene, and surfeted Priest scruples not to paw, and mammock the sacramentall bread, as familiarly as his Tavern Bisket