NINTH (or TENTH) PART OF A MAN, subs. phr. (common).—A tailor. See SNIP. [From the proverb ‘Nine tailors make a man’: whence Queen Elizabeth’s traditional address to a deputation of eighteen tailors:—‘God save you, gentlemen both.’]
[There exists literary usage for this form [tenth]. Unfortunately, however, the quotation, which ante-dated the first authority infra by fifty years or more, has been mislaid, and memory, though judicially certain as to its existence, fails as regards the reference.—J. S. F.]
1763. FOOTE, The Mayor of Garratt, ii., 30. A journeyman tailor!… This cross-legged cabbage-eating son of a cucumber, this whey-faced ninny, who is but the NINTH PART OF A MAN.
1767. RAY, Proverbs [BOHN], 135. NINE TAILORS MAKE but ONE MAN.
1838. W. DIMOND, Stage Struck, sc. 1. Mil. The most savage of hoaxes! instead of gallanting a goddess to our shores, I had the felicity to usher from the boat the NINTH PART OF A MAN.
