Fixing vbl. sb.

[f. as prec. + -ING¹.]

  1.  The action of the verb FIX in various senses. Also with advbs., as fixing out, up; and gerundially with omission of in.

1605.  Bacon, Adv. Learn., II. xxii. § 14. The fixing of the good [hours of the mind] hath been practised by two means; vows or constant resolutions; and observances or exercises; which are not to be regarded so much in themselves, as because they keep the mind in continual obedience.

1666.  Earl Orrery, State Papers (1743), I. 251. I find multitudes of arms are fixing amongst the Irish gunsmiths for the Irish, as well as amongst the sectary gunsmiths for the fanaticks.

1769.  Falconer, Dict. Marine (1789), D d. The filling and fixing of the shells.

1792.  in Picton, L’pool Munic. Rec. (1886), II. 267. To superintend the fixing up of the said figure.

1817.  Keats, Lett., Wks. 1889, III. 53. Another reason of my fixing is, that I am more in reach of the places around me.

1883.  Mrs. Rollins, New Eng. Bygones, 157. For the daughters, as they grew up, table-linen and bedding were to be stored away for their ‘fixing out.’

  b.  Photogr. The process of rendering (a negative, etc.) permanent; concr. that which fixes.

1853.  Family Her., 3 Dec., 510/2. In the next operation, the fixing, it will become much lighter.

c. 1865.  J. Wylde, in Circ. Sc., I. 146/1. Hyposulphite of soda is largely prepared for photographic ‘fixing,’ and is accordingly a cheap and easily procured salt.

1879.  Cassell’s Techn. Educ., III. 65. For the fixing of the image we should recommend the use of a dipping bath.

  c.  A method or means of fixing. rare.

1660.  Jer. Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, II. ii. I. 360. They [Jewish feasts] were ineffective and insignificative; but onely present Entertainments of their obedience, and divertisements and fixings of their thoughts apt to wander to the Gentile Customes; but nothing of Natural religion.

1793.  Smeaton, Edystone L., 121. It seeming to be a first principle, to cut the rock as little as we could help; and for this end, to humour its irregularities as far as we could, so as to get a firm fixing for our work.

  2.  concr. a. In pl. (orig. U.S.) Apparatus, equipment; trimming of a dress; the adjuncts to any dish, garnishing. Also (Australian slang), strong liquor (Barrére and Leland, 1889).

1827.  J. F. Cooper, The Prairie, I. ii. 30. ‘Your fixen seem none of the best, for such a calling.’

1839.  Marryat, Diary Amer., Ser. I. II. 228. ‘What will you have? Brown meal and common doings, or white wheat and chicken fixings;’—that is, ‘Will you have pork and brown bread, or white bread and fried chicken?’

1842.  Dickens, Amer. Notes (1850), 101/1. ‘Will you try,’ said my opposite neighbour, handing me a dish of potatoes, broken up in milk and butter, ‘will you try some of these fixings?’

1851.  Mayne Reid, Scalp Hunt., I. ii. 21. I need not describe a dinner at the Planter’s St. Louis, with its venison steaks, its buffalo tongues, its ‘prairie chickens,’ and its delicious frog ‘fixings’ from the Illinois ‘bottom.’

1855.  Browning, Men & Wom., Bp. Blougram’s Apol., 212.

1861.  Lowell, Biglow P., Poems, 1890, II. 230.

1883.  B. Harte, Flip, ii. He ’s got adrift from his party, has lost his rod and fixins, and had to camp out last night in the Gin and Ginger Woods.

  b.  = FIX sb. 2.

1874.  in Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 874/2.

  3.  attrib. and Comb., as fixing process, solution (Photogr.); fixing-bath, (a) Photogr., the bath in which a developed negative or positive is plunged in order to fix it; (b) Tanning (see quot.).

1868.  M. C. Lea, Photogr., 35. The negative *fixing-bath consists of a strong solution of hyposulphite of soda.

1885.  C. T. Davis, Manuf. Leather, xxxix. 601. [The tanner] prepares a new liquor termed the ‘fixing bath,’ consisting of water sufficient to cover the skins, to which are added 1 ounce of commercial nitric acid and ¹/₂ ounce of glycerine to every 4 gallons of water.

c. 1865.  J. Wylde, in Circ. Sc., I. 141/2. The *fixing process is intended to dissolve away that portion of the silver salt which has not been acted on by the light; and it will thus prevent a picture, when obtained, from being spoilt or lost.

1872.  W. F. Stanley, Photogr., 21. The quantity of *fixing solution required will be in proportion to the number of prints to be fixed.