A queer or difficult character.

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1833.  In the slang of the backwoods, one swore that he would never be “one-eyed”—that is, dishonest; another, that he would never be “a case,” that is flat, without a dollar.—‘Sketches of D. Crockett,’ pp. 23–4 (N.Y.). (Italics in the original.)

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1840.  Were you ever at a corn shucking in the West? If you were, you never left it without hearing the wool hat and linsey hunting-shirt boys sing—

        Mary Rogers are a case,
And so are Sally Thompson;
General Jackson are a horse,
And so are Colonel Johnson.
Mr. Duncan of Ohio, House of Repr., April 10: Cong. Globe, p. 435, Appendix.    

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1856.  This sister of mine is a pretty rapid little case, I can tell you, as you saw by the way she circumvented us this morning.—H. B. Stowe, ‘Dred,’ chap. xv.

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1862.  The other prisoners are all sharp, intelligent-looking men, no hard-looking cases like Yankee prisoners and East Tennessee Tories usually are.—The Southern Confederacy (Atlanta, Ga.), May 3.

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