[pl. of BOOT sb.3, used as sing.]
1. A name for the servant in hotels who cleans the boots; formerly called boot-catcher and -catch.
a. 1798. O’Keeffe, Fontainebleau, III. i. (183[?]), 44–5 (L.). Your honour will remember the waiter?… Your honour won’t forget Jack Boots?
1836–7. Dickens, Sk. Boz (1850), 250/1. ‘I’m the boots as b’longs to the house.’
1856. W. Collins, After Dark, I. 109. I waited in the pantry till Boots had brushed the clothes.
2. (slang.) An appellation given to the youngest officer in a regiment, junior member of a club, etc.
1806. Sir R. Wilson, in Life (1862), I. ii. 60. My chief resistance to discipline was at mess where I could not brook the duties of Boots.
3. In various comb. (humorous or colloq.) = ‘Fellow, person’: as clumsy-, lazy-boots; see also SLY-BOOTS, SMOOTH-BOOTS.
1623. Percivall, Sp. Dict., Lisongero, a flatterer, a smooth boots.
1865. Dickens, Mut. Fr., IV. xi. You are the most creasing and tumbling Clumsy-Boots of a packer.
1832. Lytton, Eugene A., ii. ‘Why don’t you rise, Mr. Lazyboots?’
