Forms: 5 scqwyrt, 6 skurt, squyrt(e, squerte, squirte, 6– squirt (9 north. dial. swirt). [f. SQUIRT v.]
1. a. Diarrhœa; looseness of laxity of the bowels. Now dial. in pl.
c. 1460. Promp. Parv. (Winch. MS.), Scqwyrt, idem quod flyx, supra.
1527. Andrew, Brunswyke’s Distyll. Waters, K j b. The same is good for the squyrt, a cloute wet in the same and put behynde in the fondament.
1530. Palsgr., 317/1. Laxe as one that hath the flyxe or squyrte.
a. 1600. Deloney, Gentle Craft, II. ix. Wks. (1912), 197. If euer I come to giue him Phisicke, if I make him not haue the squirt for fiue dayes, count me the veriest dunce.
a. 1651. Cleveland, Model of New Rel., 40. A costive Dover gives the Saints the Squirt.
1719. D’Urfey, Pills, V. 311. The Cramp, the Stitch, the Squirt, the Itch.
1883. Hampshire Gloss., 88. To have the squirts.
1886. Elworthy, W. Somerset Word-bk., 707. Squirts, diarrhœa…. Called also Wild-squirts.
fig. 1639. Shirley, Ball, V. i. Your wit has got the squirt too.
1691. Wood, Ath. Oxon., I. 356. He would preach and pray extempore … insomuch that many were pleased to say he was troubled with the Divinity squirt.
† b. Thin excrement. Obs.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Foire, thin dung, skurt.
1611. Cotgr., Foire, squirt, thinne dung; a laske.
c. With a: An attack of diarrhœa.
1611. Cotgr., Aller long, to haue a squirt, to squatter out behind.
1641. (title) Taylor’s Physicke has purged the Divel; or the Divell has got a Squirt. By Voluntas Ambulatoria.
1828. Carr, Craven Gloss., II. 185. Swirt,… a diarrhœa.
2. A small tubular instrument by which water may be squirted; a form of syringe.
1530. Palsgr., 275/1. Squyrt an instrument, esguissovere.
1552–3. in Feuillerat, Revels Edw. VI. (1914), 107. vj great woodden squertes by him turned and made for the combat of the lorde of misrule.
1632. trans. Bruel’s Praxis Med., 90. If the patient bee vnwilling to take any medicines, wee must labour to put them into him with a squirt.
1697. J. Lewis, Mem. Dk. Glocester (1789), 57. While we four men were to ply him well, in the Duke’s sight, with syringes, and squirts of all sorts.
1712. J. James, trans. Le Blond’s Gardening, 175. A little Pump or Squirt.
1828. Carr, Craven Gloss., II. 185. Swirt, a syringe.
1840. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Ser. II. Nurs. Rem., vi. Billy Hawkins Came, and with his pewter squirt Squibb’d my pantaloons.
1871. L. Stephen, Playgr. Eur. (1894), xiii. 316. To them … foaming waterfalls are like streams from penny squirts.
fig. 1730. Young, Ep. Pope, I. 224. But when they have bespatter’d all they may, The statesman throws his filthy squirts away!
1734. Pope, Lett. to Swift, 6 Jan. There is a woman’s war declared against me by a certain lord; his weapons are … a pin to scratch, and a squirt to bespatter.
transf. 1855. Chamier, My Trav., I. xviii. 321. The fountains were nothing but squirts.
1890. ‘R. Boldrewood,’ Col. Reformer (1891), 81. Casting the revolver away … he … said, ‘Damn the—squirt!’
b. A larger instrument of the same type, used esp. as a fire-extinguisher.
In quot. a. 1685 referring to the plunger-pump of Sir Samuel Morland.
1590. Lucar, Lucar Solace, 157. A squirt which hath been devised to cast much water upon a burning house.
1643. Seasonable Adv. preventing Fire, in Harl. Misc. (Malh.), V. 348. Also it is necessary that every parish should have hooks, ladders, squirts, buckets, and scoops, in readiness, upon any occasion.
1667. in Strype’s Surv. Lond. (1754), I. I. xxviii. 291/2. That every Alderman … provide four and twenty buckets and one hand squirt of brass.
a. 1685. Duke, Ep. to Otway. For once a squirt was rais’d by Windsor wall.
1866. C. F. T. Young, Fires, Fire Engines, etc. vi. 69. Fire engines … seem to have been altogether forgotten in the ‘dark ages,’ and ‘squirts’ or portable syringes appear to have been the only contrivances in use.
† c. A kind of inflater or air-pump. Obs.–0
1598. Florio, Gonfiatoio,… a squirt of brasse that Balloniers vse to blowe their ballones full of winde.
3. A small quantity of liquid that is squirted; a small jet or spray; an act of squirting.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 500. The Watring of those Lumps of Dung, with Squirts of an Infusion of the Medicine in Dunged water.
1760. Sterne, Tr. Shandy, III. xxviii. How different from the rash jerks and hare-brained squirts thou art wont … to transact it with in other humours,… spurting thy ink about thy table and thy books.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., II. V. iii. And now in these new days such issues do come from a squirt of the pen by some foolish rhyming Réné.
1858. Hawthorne, Fr. & It. Note-bks., I. 96. The water makes but the smallest part—a little squirt or two.
1878. Stevenson, Inland Voy., 78. The rain kept coming in squirts and the wind in squalls.
b. Math. (See quot.)
1878. W. K. Clifford, Elem. Dynamic. Kinem., 214. The point ς is called a source of strength μ when the fluid streams out in all directions; when μ is negative, so that the fluid streams inwards, it is called a sink. The whole velocity-system here described may be called a squirt.
4. † a. The squirting or spirting cucumber. Obs.–1
1753. Chambers’ Cycl., Suppl. s.v. Cucumis, The wild cucumber, or squirt, called by authors, cucumis asinus, or the ass cucumber.
b. slang. (See quot.)
1859. Slang Dict., 100. Squirt, a doctor, or chemist.
c. Zool. An ascidian or sea-squirt.
1891. in Cent. Dict.
5. colloq. A paltry or contemptible person; a whipper-snapper; a fop. (Chiefly U.S. and dial.)
a. 1848. Maj. Jones’s Courtship, 160 (Bartlett). If they won’t keep company with squirts and dandies.
1887. S. Cheshire Gloss., 370. What do I care for a little squirt like thee?
6. U.S. A display of rhetoric; a piece of fine writing verging on bombast.
1872. O. W. Holmes, Poet Breakf.-t., ix. That sounds … like what we college boys used to call a ‘squirt.’ Ibid. I know what you are thinking—you’re thinking this is a squirt.
