United States or Cyprus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We now use this word to describe a kind of leather, a kind of ginger beer, and a variety of the fir tree, and also in the same sense as "spick and span." The word used to be pruce, and meant "Prussia." The name of the famous London fish-market, Billingsgate, has long been used to mean very violent and abusive language supposed to resemble the scoldings of the fishwomen in the market.
"Oh, yes, massa after dem drink pruce done, dem all go to him breakfast, massa left we for take de gun to de barrack beg one feepenny, massa" as the price of the information, I suppose. "Are the guns loaded?" said I. "Me no sabe, massa top, I shall see."
Then the constable and the earl of Tancarville, being in the little tower at the bridge foot, looked along the street and saw their men slain without mercy: they doubted to fall in their hands. At last they saw an English knight with one eye called sir Thomas Holland, and a five or six other knights with him: they knew them, for they had seen them before in Pruce, in Granade, and in other viages.
A little farther on we encountered four beautiful nine pounder fieldpieces, each lumbering along, drawn by half a dozen mules, and accompanied by three or four negroes, but with no escort whatsoever. "I say, quashie, where are the bombardiers, the artillerymen?" "Oh, massa, dem all gone to drink pruce." "What, more spruce! spruce nothing but spruce!" quoth I.
"Here, old mother Slush," sung out another of the cutter's crew. "Hand us up a dozen bottles of spruce, do you hear?" "Dozen battle of pruce!" groaned the old woman "who shall pay me?" "Why, do you think the Firebrands are thieves, you old canary, you?" "How much, eh?" said the boatswain's mate. "Twelve feepennies," quoth the matron.
Word Of The Day