One’s face; hence one’s person. Used in rustic imprecations.
1825. Young Bob’s dad—con-sarn his pictur! spry as a cat; swom like a fish.—John Neal, ‘Brother Jonathan,’ iii. 387.
1829. “Consarn his picture!” said Jeff, in a low tone of voice.—John P. Kennedy, ‘Swallow Barn,’ p. 448 (N.Y., 1851).
1830. I heard an old man-of-war’s man, at the gun next me, exclaim, ‘d—n their cowardly profiles, we sha’n’t have any fun with them after all.’—N. Ames, ‘A Mariner’s Sketches,’ p. 213. (Italics in the original.)
1843. Is that the way the Britishers larnt ye to treat a gal, blast your infarnal pictur! I ’ve a darned good mind to cut your throat.—Yale Lit. Mag., ix. 79 (Dec.).
1845. “Oh, yes,” exclaimed Si, as he and his friends were busied in righting the cart—“dadfetch your everlastin’ picter.”—W. T. Thompson, ‘Chronicles of Pineville,’ p. 114 (Phila.).
1845. You’ll get waked up worse than you ever was afore—drat your infernal picters.—Id., p. 181.
1846. Consarn you, Bill Granger…. Consarn your picter!—W. T. Porter, ed., ‘A Quarter Race in Kentucky,’ etc., p. 159.
1847. Well, my sister Marth made me a bran new pair of buckskin trowsers to go in, and rile my picter, ef she didn’t put stirrups to ’em to keep ’em down.—Robb, ‘Streaks of Squatter Life,’ &c., p. 61 (Phila.).
1847. Whar is he?—Which is him?—consarn his comic pictur, show him out—ha-ha-ha!—Id., p. 85.
1847. Confound their picturs, they are the most troublesome customers an Administration ever had.—Seba Smith (‘Major Downing’), ‘My Thirty Years Out of the Senate,’ p. 262 (1860).
1848. Ef I could only come across that ere Vermonter which I was took in by, if I wouldn’t spile his picter, bust my boots and gallowses!—Durivage and Burnham, ‘Stray Subjects,’ pp. 167–8.
1852. It was’nt any fellow of that name, but Bill Jones, that kissed me; and, confound his picture, I told him everybody would find it out.—Daily Morning Herald, St. Louis, Dec. 28.
