a. Sc. [perh. a. ON. bágr, uneasy, poor, hard up; cf. also, bagr awkward, clumsy.] Weak, poor, pithless, without substance or stamina; ‘indifferent,’ ‘sorry,’ ‘shaky.’ Hence Bauchly adv., Bauchness.
a. 1560. Rolland, Crt. Venus, IV. 355. Thocht he and I throw play fell in bawch pleid.
a. 1603. Sir J. Melvil, Diary, 37. He fond me bauche in the latin toung.
1728. Ramsay, Gentle Sheph., Poems (1844), 41. Without estate A youth, though sprung frae kings, looks bauch and blate.
1866. N. Brit. Daily Mail, 9 March. Though the ice was rather baugh.
a. 1687. R. McWard, Earnest Contend. for Faith (1723), 155 (Jam.). How bluntly and bauchly soever the Matter be handled.
¶ The north. Eng. dial. form is baff, as in baff week, ‘hard-up week.’
1885. Weekly Times, 21 Aug., 9/2. The workers in collieries receive their pay once a fortnight, and call the intervening no-pay week ‘baff-week.’ The expression ‘as long as a baff-week’ has become proverbial among them.
