Abbey

TO BRING AN ABBEY TO A GRANGE, verb. phr. (old).—To squander. Also ABLE TO BUY AN ABBEY (RAY: ‘we speak it of an unthrift’). Among kindred expressions are: To bring a noble to ninepence; to make of a lance a thorn; to make of a pair of breeches a purse; to thwite a mill-post to a pudding-prick; ‘His windmill is dwindled into a nut-cracker’; from abbess to lay-sister.