subs. (common).—Time: e.g., ‘How goes the ENEMY?’ = what’s o’clock? ‘To kill the ENEMY’ = to kill time.
1839. DICKENS, Nicholas Nickleby, ch. xix., p. 149. ‘How goes the ENEMY, Snobb?’ asked Sir Mulberry Hawke. ‘Four minutes gone.’
1864. Glasgow Citizen, 19 Nov. The swell who is bored by his efforts to ‘kill the ENEMY.’
