Contrivances, adjuncts, accessories, trimmings, knicknacks. See also CHICKEN FIXINGS.
1820. “I felt quite rich, when I found my knife, flint, and steel in my shot pouch. These little fixens,” added he, “make a man feel right peart, when he is three or four hundred miles from any body or any place—alone among the painters and wild varments.”—James Hall, ‘Letters from the West,’ p. 304 (Lond.).
1825. The veteran [Missouri] trapper was furnished with such other appliances, or fixens, as he would term them, as put him in plight again to take the field.—New Hampshire Patriot, Concord, May 23.
1827. Your fixen seem none of the best, for such a calling.—J. F. Cooper, ‘The Prairie,’ i. 30. (N.E.D.)
1833. I spose maybe you think I never seed a coach? Well, it’s a free country and every man has a right to think what he pleases; but I reckon I’ve saw as many of them are fixens as any other man. I was raised in Tennessee. I saw General Jackson once riding in the elegantest carriage that ever mortal man sot eyes on—with glass winders to it like a house, and sort o’ silk curtings. The harness was mounted with silver; it was drawd by four blooded nags, and drove by a mighty likely nigger boy.—James Hall, ‘Legends of the West,’ p. 185.
1839. A couple of friends, first rate shots, proposed a hunt, and liking the opportunity, for we knew their skill, we got our “fixens” and off we hied to the prairie—and the way the feathers flew was “a caution.”—John Plumbe, ‘Sketches in Iowa, &c.,’ p. 56 (St. Louis).
1842. Our friends who love oysters and sparkling rosy wine, and other little “fixens” in the eating way, will do well to drop in at the Bath House Refectory.—Phila. Spirit of the Times, Jan. 22.
1842. He sends his housekeeper out for a beefsteak, or some other fixins for breakfast.—Id., Feb. 26.
1842. The people of the sulphur and smoke city [Pittsburgh] are to feed him [Charles Dickens] on a mammoth ox, kept for his especial use, presuming that he is fond of “a streak of fat and a streak of lean,” and other “fixens” in the good eating way.—Id., April 2.
1842. People can’t afford to purchase the rich golden and rosy beefsteaks, as formerly. They keep soul and body together with greens and onions, shad, and such like fixins.—Id., April 16.
1843. Our travelling ‘fixins’ excited some interest along the road.—B. R. Hall (‘Robert Carlton’), ‘The New Purchase,’ i. 29.
1845. Our ladies are sadly in want of the little fixins made by the milliners.—Letter to the Bangor Mercury, n.d.
1846. A large part of [the foreign wool] is manufactured into broadcloths, cassimeres, and all sorts of fixins, that the Yankees know how to make.—Mr. Gordon of New York, House of Repr., June 26: Cong. Globe, p. 1034.
1847. You know more nor half the country if overflowed in the winter, and t’other half, which is a darned sight the biggest, is covered with cane, palmetto and other fixins.—T. B. Thorpe, ‘The Big Bear of Arkansas: A Swim for a Deer,’ pp. 119–20 (Phila.).
a. 1848. A new gown begets a desire for a new bonnet; and these together form the foundation for a host of expensive fixings and foolish flipperjigs.—Dow, Jun., ‘Patent Sermons,’ i. 187.
1848. He don’t charge nothin to see his Niagary, but makes a heap of money by selling Yankee made Ingin fixins, sich as moccasins, bead-bags, card-cases, and a heap of fancy articles, such as the Ingins themselves never dreamed of makin.—W. T. Thompson, ‘Major Jones’s Sketches of Travel,’ p. 167 (Phila.).
1850. The maid is running up and down stairs with hot water and ‘fixings.’—D. G. Mitchell, ‘The Lorgnette,’ i. 163 (1852).
1852. Those horned fixings, you shall see, I bought to break prairie.—Frontier Guardian, May 6.
1852. [A London penny loaf] is not all bread, but it is a mixture, a combination of other fixings.—H. C. Kimball at the Mormon Tabernacle, Nov. 14: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ i. 354.
1853.
| All sorts of lady-fixins thrill my feelings, as they’d orter, | |
| But little gaiter-boots are death, and nothing shorter. | |
Daily Morning Herald, St. Louis, June 22. |
1854. [They] have prepared a roasted ox, down at ‘Gillett’s Corners,’ with all the fixins’.—H. H. Riley, ‘Puddleford,’ p. 108 (N.Y.).
1855. “Open the fixin,” says he, pointing to a cupboard; “there you’ll find the tools as ’ll do it slick.”—Oregon Weekly Times, July 21.
1856. Pretty girl that in the black fixings and white arrangements, with blue doings!—Knick. Mag., xlvii. 406 (April).
1857. He stood in amazement at the lever beam, the chimneys, and the various “fixins” [of the boat].—San Francisco Call, Jan. 20.
1857. The printers acknowledge the welcome present of a dray-load of nice fixings with the above.—Foot-note to a wedding notice, Oregon Weekly Times, Aug. 1.
1857. We have our Spanish fixings—a pair of spurs that will weigh seven pounds, ringing and gingling as though all hell was coming. Why don’t you put them away?—H. C. Kimball at the Bowery, Salt Lake City, Aug. 2: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ v. 137.
1861. “You know,” continued he, “what our Minister said when he saw a nigger at some court in Europe, and was asked what he thought of him: ‘Well, I guess, said he, if you take off his fixings, he may be worth 1000 dollars down.’”—W. H. Russell, ‘My Diary, North and South,’ March 29.
[This anecdote was told, with slight variations, by Mr. Garrett Davis of Ky., U.S. Senate, April 24, 1862: Cong. Globe, p. 1806/3. The Minister was Mr. John Young Mason of Va. (1799–1859).]
1907. In November the compiler saw “MALE FIXINGS” prominently advertised on a store near the Post Office at St. Louis, Missouri.
