The name of one of the United States, formerly a province of Mexico, then for a short time an independent republic.
1. Western U.S. The uppermost structure of a river-steamer, containing the pilot-house and officers’ quarters. Also attrib.
1872. De Vere, Americanisms, 128. The cabins below this [the upper deck] and above the grand saloon, where the officers of the boat are accommodated, also belong to Texas.
1883. ‘Mark Twain,’ Life on Mississippi, iv. 43. The boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with clean white railings.
1889. Farmer, Dict. Amer., Texas tender, the waiter on the Texas or upper deck of a Mississippi steamer.
1901. W. Churchill, Crisis, xxi. He escorted the ladies to quarters in the texas.
b. ‘The elevated gallery, resembling a louver or clearstory, in a grain-elevator.’
1909. in Cent. Dict. Suppl.
2. In names of native Texan plants, animals, etc.: as Texas bead-tree, blue-grass, flax, grackle, millet, snake-root, etc. Texas (cattle-) fever, a splenic fever, caused by the protozoan Pyrosoma bigeminum, localized in the Southern States, to which unacclimatized cattle are liable.
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, Texas Millet, the Sorghum cernuum, a prolific bread-corn cultivated in the tropics.
1902. Westm. Gaz., 2 June, 10/2. It is officially announced that the cattle disease prevailing in Rhodesia is Texas fever which is spread by ticks.
