A half-grown pig; a person of no account.

1

1699.  A contributor to Notes and Queries, 8 S. ii. 526, furnishes the following example:—
  “Stolen out of a Yard in Theobald’s Park, Hertfordshire, in Cheshunt Parish, on Thursday night the 16th of this Instant, Five Shotes for store, with a large Sow; the latter valued Forty Shillings, the Shotes about 25s. a-piece; traced as for as Enfield Chace. If any Tidings can be given to John Armsby, of the said Park, or to Mr. Richard Eams, Pewterer, at the Black-Bell in Fenchurch-street, London, so as they may be recovered, or their value, shall have Two Guinea’s Reward and reasonable Charges.”—Flying Post, No. 603, March 21–3, 1699.

2

1775.  2 large shoats, 10 s. a piece.—B. Romans, ‘Florida,’ p. 193.

3

1778.  I defy him to say that I have ever been detected with any hogs, shoats, or pigs, marked or unmarked, in my pen.—Maryland Journal, Jan. 13.

4

1801.  

        The dangers of a roasting past,
  She saw thee rear’d a handsome shoat;
Saw thee a full-grown hog at last.
  And heard thee grunt a deeper note.
‘Verses addressed to a Hog’: The Port Folio, i. 352 (Phila.).    

5

1823.  The lightning conveyed itself to the stable, where it killed a fine shoat.—Lancaster (Pa.) Journal, May 16.

6

1824.  

        Our brightest belles and beaux might please
Inhabit caves and trunks of trees,
On roots and acorns dine like shoats,
And sup on buds and leaves, like goats.
New England Farmer’s Boy, New Year’s Address.    

7

1835.  Two pale-blue, dry, boiled fowls; boiled almost to dismemberment, upon a dish large enough to contain a goodly-sized shote; their legs sticking straight out, with a most undignified straddle, and bowing with a bewitching grace and elasticity to George, with every step that Flora made.—A. B. Longstreet, ‘Georgia Scenes,’ p. 115.

8

1840.  Two or three loafers—poor shoats—were brought up and fined for sleeping on the streets.—Daily Pennant, St. Louis, June 23.

9

1843.  [He showed the dog] how to worry infant pigs, then saucy shoats, and finally true hogs, and without regard of size or sex.—B. R. Hall (‘Robert Carlton’), ‘The New Purchase,’ i. 196.

10

1846.  Part of the drove were very fine and fat, but they decreased in quality and weight down to lean shoats and small pigs, most of them so feeble as to be hardly able to raise a squeal or grunt, without laying down or leaning against the wall.—‘The Cincinnati Miscellany,’ ii. 309.

11

1847.  I hurried home to tell old Venus, and to put up three shotes and some turkies to fatten for the innfare.—T. B. Thorpe, ‘The Big Bear of Arkansas: Billy Warwick’s Courtship and Wedding,’ p. 102 (Phila.).

12

1848.  If you don’t go for, and with, the party, you are considered as possessing no more patriotism than a Cincinnati shoat.—Dow, Jun., ‘Patent Sermons,’ i. 217.

13

1853.  I’ll jest give two of the fattest shoats in all Illinois, ef you’ll only find me a feller that belongs to one of the second Virginia families.—Weekly Oregonian, March 12.

14

1853.  

        Pharoah’s wife (the Scripture allow me to quote)
Cast her eyes on Joseph, on whom she did doat,
And, failing the man, she hung on to the coat.
        But your man, incog.,
Vas less of a saint, and more of a shote,
        And vent the whole hog.
Daily Morning Herald, St. Louis, July 2. (The use of v for w is due to the influence of Charles Dickens.)    

15

1853.  A well-born shote, judiciously developed by green vegetables and grain, and matured upon chestnuts, forms no mean dish.—Knick. Mag., xlii. 396 (Oct.).

16

1855.  He wore his coarse, stiff, white hair and bristly whiskers cropped short and close, so that the ruddy soil of his skin was everywhere visible through the hirsute stubble, thereby causing his complexion somewhat to resemble that of a very clean and well-conditioned white shoat.—C. W. Philleo, ‘Twice Married,’ Putnam’s Mag., v. 316/1 (March).

17

1856.  You might as well satisfy the hunger of shoats.—Knick. Mag., xlvii. 54 (Jan.).

18

1856.  I ’ve lost horses, and I ’ve lost cows—and I ’ve lost likely calves and shoats—But I never had any thing that cut me up like this!—Id., xlviii. 426 (Oct.).

19

1862.  

        I ’ve made my ch’ice, an’ ciphered out, from all I see an’ heard,
Th’ ole Constitooshun never ’d git her decks for action cleared,
Long ’z you elect for Congressmen poor shotes thet want to go
Coz they can’t seem to git their grub no otherways than so.
Lowell, ‘Biglow Papers,’ 2nd Series, No. 3.    

20

1862.  

        Your Belmonts, Vallandighams, Woodses, an’ sech,
Poor shotes thet ye could n’t persuade us to tech.
Id., No. 4.    

21

1862.  

        Conciliate? it jest means be kicked,
  No metter how they phrase an’ tone it;
It means thet we ’re to set down licked,
  Thet we ’re poor shotes an’ glad to own it!
Id., No. 7.    

22

1889.  The wandering shote, the hen-roosts, the Virginia fence, and the straw-stack, came to be regarded as perquisites of the Union army.—J. D. Billings, ‘Hard Tack and and Coffee,’ p. 155 (Boston).

23

*** See also Appendix XIX.

24