grease spot

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English[edit]

Noun[edit]

grease spot (plural grease spots)

  1. (informal) A minute remnant, humorously the only distinguishable remains of an antagonist after a fight.
    • 1866, Israel Gibbons, Crescent-shine, page 108:
      If you'd come at me with even numbers, I wouldn't leave a grease spot of you.
    • Quoted in 2011, Thomas Christie, Hampton Smith, Brother of Mine: The Civil War Letters of Thomas and William Christie (page 242)
      [W]hole Brigades of theirs were "wiped out," there being hardly a grease spot left of the Kentucky Brigade, which were the ones I saw fight.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see grease,‎ spot.

References[edit]

  • John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary