1. An extremity of a string or the like left hanging loose; fig. of something left disconnected, undecided or unguarded. Chiefly pl.
1546. J. Heywood, Prov. (1867), 37. Some loose or od ende will come man.
1577. Harrison, England, II. v. (1877), I. 110. The cleargie men … are beloued generallie … except peraduenture of some hungrie wombes, that couet to plucke & snatch at the loose ends of their best commodities; with whom it is … a common guise, when a man is to be preferred to an ecclesiasticall liuing, what part thereof he will first forgo and part with to their vse.
1868. Bain, Mental & Mor. Sci., 6. A completed connexion between the extremities of the body and the cells of the grey matter, or else between one cell and another of the central lump; there are no loose ends.
1897. Boston (Mass.) Jrnl., 1 Jan., 4/5. No loose ends of controversy along these lines will be left to be taken up by the new Administration.
2. Phr. At (after, on) a loose end: not regularly occupied, having no settled employment; not knowing what to be at. Also (to leave a matter) at a loose end: unsettled. colloq., orig. dial. (cf. loose hand, LOOSE a. 9).
1851. Mayhew, Lond. Labour (1864), II. 55. One informant told me that the bird-catchers,… when young,… were those who ‘liked to be after a loose end,’ first catching their birds, as a sort of sporting business, and then sometimes selling them in the streets.
1856. P. Thompson, Hist. Boston, 214. ‘He’s on a loose end,’ without employment.
1860. Geo. Eliot, Mill on Fl., VI. iv. III. 54. When I’ve left off carrying my pack, and am at a loose end.
1864. Fraser’s Mag., LXIX. 412/1. But to stop short of that is to leave the whole matter at a loose end.
1870. E. Peacock, Ralf Skirl., III. 228. On the Saturday evening he, like Bob, was at the ‘lowse end,’ but he had full employment.
1889. W. H. Mallock, In Enchanted Isl., 262. Excepting myself he was the only stranger in Cyprus who was thus at a loose end, as it were, and not on some professional duty.
3. Mining. (See quots.)
1865. Bower, Slate Quarries, 17. A ‘loose end,’ as quarrymen call it, should always be selected for carrying on operations on the top rock.
1881. Raymond, Mining Gloss., Loose-end, a gangway in long-wall working, driven so that one side is solid ground while the other opens upon old workings.
1883. Gresley, Gloss. Coal Mining, Loose End, the limit of a stall next to the goaf, or where the adjoining stall is in advance.
