Gouge¹

To squeeze out an opponent’s eye with one’s thumb and finger. This brutal practice appears to have been unknown in New England, but to have been practised considerably by the rougher sort of frontiersmen, and in early days along the Mississippi.

[1775.  This event may give rise to some malevolent pen to write, that many of the killed and wounded at Lexington, were not only scalped, but had their eyes forced out of the sockets by the fanatics of New England: not one was so treated either there or at Concord.—W. Gordon, ‘Hist. of the Am. Revol.’ (Lond., 1788), i. 480.]

1776.  A soldier, who had been slightly wounded, appeared with his eyes torn out of their sockets, by the barbarous habit of GOOGING, a word and practice peculiar to the Americans.—‘The Rights of Great Britain Asserted,’ p. 67 of the Philadelphia reprint.

1787.  A paper, “On the practice of Gouging,” appeared in the American Museum for May, i. 471–2.

1790.  

  [The allusion is to suggestions for the removal of the national capital.]

1795.  [They] got him down, cut off his ears and nose, and gouged his eyes, and otherwise bruised him. [This was at Trenton, N.J.]—Id., Phila., April 8.

1796.  

1796.  In their common affrays they gouge and commit other barbarities.—T. Twining, ‘Travels in America’ (1894), p. 91. (N.E.D.)

1797.  [The Georgians] can keep Negro slaves, race horses, gouge out eyes,… and be honored in the land.—Mass. Spy, July 12.

1800.  McBirnie … gouged his eye.—Addison’s ‘Reports,’ p. 29. (N.E.D.)

1801.  Here’s hunting of fleeas (sic), cracking of lice, cutting of cards and cutting wens, sticking and gouging, and a chance of being frightened all the way to Hockhocking on the Green Verge.—Lancaster (Pa.) Journal, Jan. 17.

1801.  The Englishman, who was superior to our Sampson in the art of boxing, knocked him down three times, and the last time twisted his fingers into his hair, to gouge him.—The Intelligencer, Lancaster, Pa., Sept. 2. [This item, “From a Boston paper,” was reprinted at Salem, Worcester, and many other places.]

1805.  The angel of truth never would thus rail at our democratic members, calling this a flatterer of the people, that a gambler, and the other a gouger.—Salem (Mass.) Register, Jan. 29.

1805.  [He had been] severely whipped with a cowskin, and his eyes apparently gouged almost out.—News from Lexington, Ky., in the Balt. Evening Post, April 2, p. 2/4.

1807.  The Major pushed his arguments home, with a blow on Matthews’s mouth, who on his part would have gouged him if he could.—The Balance, April 21, p. 128.

1809.  A gigantic, gunpowder race of men, who lived on hoe cakes and bacon, drank mint juleps and apple toddy, and were exceedingly expert at boxing, biting, gouging, tar and feathering, and a variety of other athletic accomplishments, which they had borrowed from their cousins german and prototypes, the Virginians, to whom they have ever borne considerable resemblance.—W. Irving, ‘A History of New-York,’ i. 239 (1812).

1810.  Their hands, teeth, knees, head and feet are their weapons, not only boxing with their fists … but also tearing, kicking, scratching, biting, gouging each others eyes out by a dexterous use of a thumb and finger, and doing their utmost to kill each other, even when rolling over one another on the ground.—F. Cuming, ‘Sketches of a Tour,’ p. 118 (Pittsburgh).
  [These were the backwoodsmen on the Ohio frontier. The editor adds, in an apologetic footnote, that the description should have been confined to a few persons. “Nor can we believe (he adds) even the more profligate among the class here spoken of would purposely meet to fight, to gouge, and to tear each other’s flesh in the manner described; but that fighting, gouging, &c., might be the consequence of such meetings, we have little doubt.”]

1816.  He would not take half a dollar I offered him for a bowl of milk, but actually looked as if he would gouge me when I insisted upon it.—J. K. Paulding, ‘Letters from the South,’ ii. 9 (N.Y., 1817). (Italics in the original.)

a. 1820.  In most cases both parties were severely bruised, bitten, and gouged, and would be weeks in recovering. It was a brutal, but not fatal mode of combat. [This was in Missouri.]—Peter H. Burnett, ‘Recollections and Opinions of an Old Pioneer,’ p. 19.

1821.  Gouging familiarly attributed to us by some of your writers, is as absolutely unknown in New-England as in St. James’s palace.—T. Dwight, ‘Travels,’ iv. 266.

1822.  One of two lawyers, in Mobile, Ala., bit the other so severely, and gouged both his eyes so much, as to leave pretty severe marks.—Lancaster (Pa.) Journal, Aug. 30.

1823.  [I was] well pleased to turn my back on all the spitting, gouging, dirking, duelling, swearing, and staring, of Old Kentucky.—W. Faux, ‘Memorable Days in America,’ p. 203 (Lond.).

1823.  If I wished to be social and get drunk with them, I dare not; for they would take the liberty to scratch me like a tiger, and gouge, and dirk me. I cannot part with my nose and eyes.—Id., p. 194.

1825.  James K. Paulding, in ‘John Bull in America,’ repeatedly ridicules the tales of frequent gouging. See pp. 2, 65, 101, 118, 129–31, 178, &c.

1826.  [On the Mississippi] I saw more than one man, who wanted an eye, and ascertained that I was now in the region of “gouging.”—T. Flint, ‘Recollections,’ p. 98.

1828.  Be sure not to forget the gouging of the judge, the roasting of the negro, the wooden nutmegs, and the indigo coal; and above all, the excellent story of the wooden bowls.—J. K. Paulding, ‘The New Mirror for Travellers,’ p. 81.

1830.  Gouge him! Gouge him! exclaimed a dozen voices.—Geo. D. Prentice, in the Northern Watchman (Troy, N.Y.), Sept. 7.

1834.  His nose sharp enough to have gouged the eye of a musquetoe.—Grant Thorburn’s ‘Forty Years’ Residence in America,’ p. 150 (Boston).

1834.  He gouged his old horse, who wriggled, shot forward, and curled it so rapidly, that all which remained visible of him was a dark streak. [Note. ‘To gouge a horse,’ is to spur him.]—Knick. Mag., iii. 32 (Jan.).

1835.  Though I saw many boisterous doings [on the Mississippi], and many an amusing specimen of rough manners, I never saw any one stabbed or gouged.—C. J. Latrobe, ‘The Rambler in North America,’ i. 228 (N.Y.).

1836.  The editor of the Western Emigrant, published at Bradford, Ky., was lately assaulted in his own office by two ruffians, one a deputy sheriff, and during a short scuffle he had an ear bit off, and one of his eyes gouged out. So says the Louisville Journal.—Phila. Public Ledger, Sept. 3.

1842.  Savage Gouging. A man of Gibson, Indiana, had one eye gouged out, and the other much injured, a short time ago, in a fight.—Phila. Spirit of the Times, March 29.

1842.  

1843.  Rowdy Bill, be it known, was famous as a gouger, and so expert was he in his antioptical vocation, that in a few minutes he usually bored out an antagonist’s eyes, or made him cry peccavi.—B. R. Hall (‘Robert Carlton’), ‘The New Purchase,’ ii. 158.

1844.  His right eye [was] shut as tightly as the one which some amiable playmate had gouged out in youth.—Watmough, ‘Scribblings and Sketches,’ p. 32 (Phila.).

1847.  Old Sparrowhawk was there, who had seen all the best fighting at Natchez, under the hill, in the days of Dad Girty and Jim Snodgrass, and he says my gouging is beautiful; one of Bill’s eyes is like the mouth of an old ink bottle, only, as the fellow said, describing the jackass by the mule, it is more so.—T. B. Thorpe, ‘The Big Bear of Arkansas: Jones’s Fight,’ p. 38 (Phila.).

1848.  

1856.  It made the governor a mere gouger, which would be humbling in the extreme.—Weekly Oregonian, Jan. 5.

1856.  He gib ADAM lodlom, till he git sound ’sleep: den he gouge a rib out he side, an’ make EBE.—Negro sermon, Knick. Mag., xlvii. 211 (Feb.).

1857.  They would gouge Beelzebub out of his pitchfork and eye-teeth, if they could catch him anywhere between Beaver-street and Bleeker—in less than four seconds.—Id., xlix. 37 (Jan.).

1869.  The hat, which he dolefully exhibited, certainly had a hole through it a little above the range of the scalp, but whether made by a Minié ball or gouged out with a knife for purposes of indemnity could not be determined.—J. Ross Browne, ‘Adventures in the Apache Country,’ p. 164 (N.Y.).