verb. (common).—1. To ordain: TO BE JAPANNED = to take orders.
1756. The Connoisseur, No. 105, 29 Jan. Jack … sent me a very hearty letter, informing me that he had been double JAPANNED (as he called it), about a year ago, and was the present incumbent of ——.
1811. GROSE and CLARKE, Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v. JAPANNED. … To put on the black cloth: from the colour of the japan ware, which is black.
1819. T. MOORE, Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress, 5.
| And lobsters will lie such a drug upon hand, | |
| That our do-nothing Captains must all get JAPANN’D. |
1852. BRISTED, Five Years in an English University, 344. Many … step … into the Church without any pretence of other change than in the attire of their outward man, on being JAPANNED, as assuming the black dress and white tie is called in University slang.
1879. PAYN, High Spirits (Change of Views). He … was to be JAPANNED in a fortnight. That was the expression which, I am grieved to say, he used, in those unregenerate days, for the ceremony of ordination.
2. (American thieves’).—To convert: TO BE JAPANNED = to be converted.—MATSELL (1859).
3. (common).—To black one’s boots. Fr. sabouler. Also to JAPAN ONE’S TROTTER-CASES.
1712. GAY, Trivia, ii. 166. And aids with soot the new JAPANNING art.
1734. POPE, Satire, iii., 156. Prefer a new JAPANNER to their shoes.
1755. JOHNSON, A Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. JAPAN. To black and gloss shoes. A low phrase.
1772. G. A. STEVENS, Songs, Comic and Satyrical, ‘Honour.’
| With courtier-like bowing the shoe-cleaners call, | |
| And offer’d their brush, stool, and shining black ball; | |
| JAPANNING your honour, these colourists plan, | |
| And, really, some honours may want a JAPAN. |
1837. DICKENS, Oliver Twist, xviii. He applied himself to a process which Mr. Dawkins designated as JAPANNING his trotter-cases. The phrase, rendered into plain English, signifieth cleaning his boots.
