Nearly obs. in England. The N.E.D. gives examples from the Cursor Mundi down to Sydney Smith.
1779. Summer is coming, and we shall be ruin’d. When flowers are plenty, no body will buy them.—Mrs. Cowley, ‘Who’s the Dupe?’
1796. The shagbark, English walnut, &c. are very plenty.—Gazette of the U.S., Phila., Aug. 23.
1805. The animals called skunks are extremely plenty and tame in the barrens of Kentucky.—Matthew Lyon to William Duane: Mass. Spy, June 26.
1815. Money becomes so plenty that it is hardly worth having, which is an excellent thing.—Id., Nov. 15.
1819. See NATION.
1820. Irishmen are “plenty” in Pennsylvania, and pretty girls in Rhode Island.—James Hall, ‘Letters from the West,’ p. 174 (Lond.).
1820. $50 and $100 fees are not very plenty in this part of the country, at least not with young lawyers.—Butler to Hoyt, in Mackenzie’s ‘Life of Martin Van Buren,’ p. 166–7 (Boston, 1846).
1822. Fish are also plenty; an Indian will catch a small canoe full in two or three hours, with a hook.—Mass. Spy, Feb. 6: from the Detroit Gazette.
1824. Monsieur, whom you saw at Edinburgh, is remarkable, as I hear, for consuming a hat per day, when one is each morning put upon his toilet. Hats were not so plenty then.—John Randolph to Dr. Brockenborough, July 24: H. A. Garland, ‘Life,’ ii. 226 (1851).
1833. The dandies of threescore were as plenty as the belles of a certain age.—J. K. Paulding, ‘The Banks of the Ohio,’ ii. 53 (Lond.).
1836. After forty speeches, topics plenty as blackberries still spring up.—Mr. Vanderpoel of N.Y. in the House of Repr., March 21: Cong. Globe, p. 225.
1836. Other fragments are rather more plenty in the West.—Western Pioneer, Ill., Aug. 5.
1837. Fips and levies ain’t as plenty as snowballs in this ’ere yearthly spear.—J. C. Neal, ‘Charcoal Sketches,’ p. 182.
1845. In New Hampshire the chief product was granite, and that was so plenty it could not be given away.—Mr. Wentworth of Illinois, House of Repr., Jan. 27: Cong. Globe, p. 201.
1846. At times fish are plenty; at other times so scarce that the fares are scarcely adequate to cover the expenses.—Mr. Davis of Mass., U.S. Senate, March 24: id., p. 538.
1848. When milk was not plenty the lack was supplied by the substantial dish of hommony.—Monette, ‘History of the Mississippi Valley,’ ii. 8. [For fuller quotation see JOHNNY-CAKE.]
1866. We had some meat, though not very plenty, and we got some roots and berries in the woods.—Seba Smith, ‘’Way Down East,’ p. 331.
1869. [In Turkey] mosques are plenty, churches are plenty, graveyards are plenty, but morals and whiskey are scarce.—Mark Twain, ‘The Innocents Abroad,’ ch. xxxiv.
