[f. CAST ppl. a.]
A. ppl. a. Thrown off, rejected from use, discarded: as clothes, a favorite, a lover, etc.
1746. W. Thompson, R. N. Advoc. (1757), 40. Cast-off Hunters, turn’d upon the Road for Post Chaise Service.
1755. Connoisseur, No. 80. A cast-off suit of my wife’s.
1809. W. Irving, Knickerb. (1861), 139. To strut at his heels, wear his cast-off clothes.
1840. Mill, Diss. & Disc. (1859), I. 235. The cast-off extravagances of Goethe and Schiller.
1844. Stanley, Arnold (1858), I. iv. 169. The worn and cast-off skin.
1853. Rogers, Ecl. Faith, 44. To array your thoughts in the tatters of the cast-off Bible.
B. sb. A person or thing that is cast-off or abandoned as worthless or useless. (For the plural cast-offs is more according to analogy.)
1741. Richardson, Pamela, I. 49. And how in a little while must they have look’d, like old Cast-offs.
1850. Blackie, Æschylus, I. 82. Thou shalt be From the city of the free Thyself a cast-off.
1867. Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk., Cast-offs, landsmen’s clothes.
1872. Spurgeon, Treas. Dav., Ps. lxxvii. 7. The objects of his contemptuous reprobation, his everlasting cast-offs.
1884. Longm. Mag., April, 607. Our horses, casts-off from the flat.
