subs. (American).—1. A dandified PUPPY (q.v.); an upstart; a cad. Whence SQUIRTISH = dandified, self-assertive, caddish. In contempt.
1844. W. T. THOMPSON, Major Jones’s Courtship, 160. If they won’t keep company with SQUIRTS and dandies, who’s going to make a monkey of himself?
1847. ROBB, Streaks of Squatter Life, 73. Its my opinion, these SQUIRTISH kind of fellars ain’t perticular hard baked, and they allers goes in for aristocracy notions.
1854. W. NORTH, The Slave of the Lamp, 25. He’s a galvanized SQUIRT, and as the parson said, “the truth ain’t in him.”
2. (public schools’).—An obnoxious boy: cf. SQUIRM.
3. (old colloquial).—A spurt.
1759–67. STERNE, Tristram Shandy, iii. 28. How different from the rash jerks, and hare-brained SQUIRTS thou art wont, Tristram, to transact it with in other humours.
4. (old).—(a) In pl. = diarrhœa: cf. SQUITTERS; and (b) a chemist or apothecary.
1551. STILL, Gammer Gurton’s Needle, i. 2.
| Hodge. See, so I am arrayed with dabbling in the dirt! | |
| She that set me to ditching, I would she had THE SQUIRT. |
1678. COTTON, Scarronides, or Virgil Travestie (1770), 12.
| It bounces, foams, and froths, and flitters, | |
| As if ’twere troubl’d with the SQUITTERS? |
1696. MOTTEUX, Rabelais, ‘The Pantagruelian Prognostication,’ iii. Troubled with the thoro’-go-nimble, or wild-SQUIRT.
1699. GARTH, The Dispensary, Dramatis Personæ. SQUIRT, an apothecary’s boy.
1712. GAY, Trivia, ii. 563.
| Pleas’d sempstresses the Lock’s fam’d Rape unfold; | |
| And SQUIRTS read Garth till apozems grow cold. |
5. (Harvard).—‘A showy recitation’ (HALL).
Verb. (old).—To BLAB (q.v.).
TO SQUIRT ONE’S DYE, verb. phr. (American).—To seize an opportunity.
