To conduct one through an enterprise, a course of study, &c. To put anything through is to carry it to a successful issue.
1847. ‘Elder,’ says I, ‘I ’ve come down to have you put me through!’—Knick. Mag., xxx. 563 (Dec.). (Italics in the original.)
1852. I rayther think she ’s sickly, but I shall put her through for what she ’s worth; she may last a year or two. I don’t go for savin’ niggers. Use up, and buy more, ’s my way.—Mrs. Stowe, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ ch. xxxi. (N.E.D.)
1854.
| First Thatcher, then Hadley, then Larned and Prex, | |
| Each put our class through in succession. | |
Presentation Day Songs, June 14: Hall, ‘College Words,’ p. 362 (1856). |
1854. That’s Tutor … he ’ll most likely put you through on Latin.—Yale Lit. Mag., xx. 104.
1858. During our stay we called upon Rev. W. T. Bacon, whose enterprise proposed, and whose energy put through the instituting of the Yale Literary Magazine—Id., xxiii. 332. (Italics in the original.)
1858. In a word, I would, in the plebeian, but expressive phrase, “put him through” all the material part of life; see him sheltered, warmed, fed, button-mended, and all that, just to be able to lay on his talk when I liked,—with the privilege of shutting it off at will.—Holmes, ‘The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table,’ ch. 3.
1858. That was the way he “put her through.”—O. W. Holmes, ‘The One-Hoss Shay.’
1861. Tell him when he starts to put it through—not to be writing or telegraphing back here, but to put it through.—Letter of President Lincoln to Secretary Cameron, June 20: Cong. Globe, p. 292/2.
1862. I would like to express to this Administration the wish that when they had started they “put it through.”—Mr. Daniel Clark of New Hampshire, U.S. Senate, Jan. 13: id., p. 292/2.
1862. I ’ll take keer of the old gentleman, and put him through jest ’z if he was my own father, and wuth a million slugs.—Theodore Winthrop, ‘John Brent,’ pp. 196–7 (N.Y., 1876).
