[f. LEATHER sb.]
1. trans. To cover or arm with leather.
a. 1225, c. 1400. [see LEATHERED ppl. a.].
1564–5. Acc., in Willis & Clark, Cambridge (1886), III. 362. For mending and newe lethering the Colledge Quisshens vs.
a. 1774. Goldsm., Exper. Philos. (1776), II. 52. The piston or sucker is leathered so tight as to fit the barrel exactly.
1794. Rigging & Seamanship, I. 27. The round holes of all caps are leathered.
1830. Alford, in Life (1873), 51. Cleaned, new-leathered, and tuned the dining-room piano.
1850. Fanny Parks, Wand. Pilgrim, I. 135. My husband used to cut it up to leather the tips of billiard cues.
2. To beat with a leathern thong; hence gen. to beat, thrash.
a. 1625. Beaum. & Fl., Faithf. Friends, II. iii. I am mad,… I shall leather ’em.
1764. Foote, Mayor of G., I. Wks. 1799, I. 174. I would so swinge and leather my lambkin.
1815. Sporting Mag., XLV. 161. Sam leather’d his man, and the mob were amazed.
1860. Geo. Eliot, Mill on Fl., I. v. I gave Spouncer a black eye … that’s what he got by wanting to leather me.
1882. Tennyson, Promise of May, II. Wks. (1889), 793/1. I’d like to leather ’im black and blue.
b. fig. intr. To work hard; with away, on.
1869. E. Farmer, Scrap Bk. (ed. 6), 44. How they leather’d away at the job.
1893. Crockett, Stickit Minister, 239. So their minister simply kept leathering on at the fundamentals.
