subs. (old).—1. An anatomy; a ‘specimen’; a skeleton; also OTAMY: whence (2) a very lean person; a walking skeleton.
1598. SHAKESPEARE, 2 Henry IV., v. 4. 33. Host. Thou ATOMY, thou! Dot. Come, you thin thing, come, you rascal.
1681. R. KNOX, An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, 124. Consumed to an ANATOMY, having nothing left but Skin to cover his Bones.
1728. GAY, The Beggar’s Opera, ii. 1. He is among the OTAMYS at Surgeon’s Hall.
1755. SMOLLETT, Quixote (1803), IV. 148. My bones … will be taken up smooth, and white and bare as an ATOM.
1822. SCOTT, The Fortunes of Nigel, iii. ‘He was an ATOMY when he came up from the North, and … died … at twenty stone weight.’
1823. COOPER, The Pioneers, i. xiii. He had coloured his sides, so that they looked just like an ATOMY, ribs and all.
1848. DICKENS, Dombey and Son, 86. Withered ATOMIES of teaspoons.
1864. MRS. W. REYNOLDS LLOYD, The Ladies of Polcarrow, 149. We should have wasted to ATOMIES if we had stayed in that terrible bad place any longer.
1866. G. A. SALA, Gaslight and Daylight, ix. A miserable little ATOMY, more deformed, more diminutive, more mutilated than any beggar in a bowl.
1884. Cornhill Magazine, May, 478. Scarecrow and ATOMY, what next will you call me? Yet you want to marry me!
1886. M. E. BRADDON, Mohawks, xxii. ‘How lovely his young wife looks to-night, lovely enough to keep that poor old ATOMY in torment!’
2. (old).—A diminutive person; a pigmy.
1595. SHAKESPEARE, Romeo and Juliet, i. 4. 57.
| Queen Mab … the fairies’ midwife; and she comes | |
| In shape no bigger than an agate-stone | |
| On the forefinger of an alderman, | |
| Drawn with a team of little ATOMIES, | |
| Athwart men’s noses as they fall asleep. | |
| Ibid. (1600), As You Like It, iii. 5. | |
| That eyes that are the frail’st and softest things | |
| Who shut their coward gates on ATOMIES | |
| Should be call’d tyrants, butchers, murderers! |
1599. DAVIES, Of the Soule of Man and the Immortalitie Thereof, 35. Epicures make them swarmes of ATOMIES.
1625. DONNE, Anatomy of the World, i. 209.
| And freely men confess that this world’s spent, | |
| When in the planets and the firmament | |
| They seek so many new; they see that this | |
| Is crumbled out again t’ his ATOMIES. |
3. (American thieves’).—An empty-headed person.
