arch. Also 7–8 citt. Short for citizen; usually applied, more or less contemptuously, to a townsman or ‘cockney’ as distinguished from a countryman, or to a tradesman or shopkeeper as distinguished from a gentleman; Johnson says ‘A pert low townsman; a pragmatical trader.’
a. 1644. Cleveland, Rupertismus (1659). Let Isaac [i.e., Ld. Mayor Pennington] and his Citts flay off the plate That tips their antlers for the Calf of State.
1674. Marvell, Ballad. O ye addle-brain’d cits!
1735. Pope, Donne’s Sat., IV. 144. Why Turnpikes rose, and now no Cit nor clown Can gratis see the country, or the town?
1771. Johnson, Th. Falkl. Isl., Wks. X. 63. The cits of London and the boors of Middlesex.
1841. Catlin, N. Amer. Ind. (1844), II. liv. 185. I intend to … send it to New York for the cits to read.
1881. Besant & Rice, Chapl. of Fleet, I. viii. The low hills of Highgate, Hampstead, and Hornsey, the paradise of cits.
b. Used as feminine: (but cf. CITESS.)
1706. Estcourt, Fair Examp., I. i. 9. Mrs. Whims. Poor ignorant Citts, that never knew what the Fashions were in our Lives.
1751. Johnson, Rambler, No. 116, ¶ 10. The country ladies despised her as a cit.
c. ? Citizenship, citizen character.
a. 1745. Swift, Wks. (1841), II. 56. The knighthood of an alderman spoils his cit.
d. Comb., as cit-like, cit-looking, adj.
a. 1763. Shenstone, Œcon., 1. The world, the cit-like world Bids thee beware.
1848. W. H. Kelly, trans. L. Blanc’s Hist. Ten Y., I. 500. Their cit-like importance.
1828. Blackw. Mag., XXIII. 364/1. Decent cit-looking elderly gentlemen.
