Forty

a. and sb. Forms: 1 feéowertiȝ, féowurtiȝ, Northumb. feuortiȝ, 2 Orm. fowwerrtiȝ, feortiȝ, 2–3 f(e)owerti, 3 feouwerti, f(e)uwerti, fuerti, feowrti, fourte, 3–4 fourti, south. vourti, -y, (3 forti), 3–8 fourty, 4 faurty, 5 fourthi, -y, 6 fourtie, -ye, fortie, 6– forty. [OE. féowertiȝ = OFris. fiuwertich, OS. fiwartig, fiartig, fiortig (MDu. viertich, Du. veertig), OHG. fiorzug (MHG. vierzic, mod.Ger. vierzig), ON. fiórer tiger, fiǫrutigi, fiǫrutíu (Sw. fyratio, fyrtio, Da. fyrretyve, firti), Goth. fidwôr tigjus: see FOUR and -TY.]

  A.  adj. The cardinal number equal to four tens, represented by the figures 40, xl, or XL. Also in comb. with numbers below ten (cardinal and ordinal), as forty-one, forty-first, etc.

c. 950.  Lindisfarne Gospels, Matt. iv. 2. & mið ðy ȝefæste feuortiȝ daȝa & feowertiȝ næhta.

c. 1175.  Cott. Hom., 227. He hi afedde feortiȝ wintre.

c. 1200.  Trin. Coll. Hom., 61. Adam was in helle in pine fuwerti hundred wintres for his sinne.

1297.  R. Glouc. (1724), 419. More þan a uourty ȝer hyt was þat he was ybore.

c. 1386.  Chaucer, Can. Yeom. Prol. & T., 808.

c. 1489.  Caxton, Sonnes of Aymon, i. 55. Of the two hundred that he hadde broughte, he hadde noo moo wyth hym but fourthi.

c. 1585.  R. Browne, Answ. Cartwright, 43. In the fourtie and eyght Psalme.

1698.  J. Fryer, A New Account of East-India and Persia, 94. At the end of their Quarentine, which is Forty days, after the Old Law, they enter the Hummums to Purify; and the Child, without much Ceremony, is named by the Parents.

1707.  Hearne, Collect. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), I. 323. He died in the fourty fifth year of his Age.

1803.  Hatchett, in Phil. Trans., XCIII. 89. It was analysed, and was found to contain one forty-eighth of antimony.

1825.  J. Neal, Brother Jonathan, II. 188. Mr. Ashley stuck to him all the day, long—which, according to his calculation, was about forty-eight hours.

1860.  Reade, Cloister & H., xxv. Ere he reached the top, Dietrich’s forty years weighed him down like forty bullets.

  b.  Used indefinitely to express a large number. Like forty (U.S. colloq.): with immense force or vigor, ‘like anything.’

1607.  Shaks., Cor., III. i. 243. Corio. On faire ground, I could beat fortie of them.

1619.  G. Herbert, Lett., 19 Jan., Wks. 1859, I. 381. I have forty businesses in my hands: your Courtesy will pardon the haste of your humblest Servant.

1692.  R. L’Estrange, Fables, cccv. He that’s Well, already, and upon a Levity of Mind, Quits his Station, in hope to be Better, ’tis Forty to One, he loses by the Change.

1852.  Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., viii. ‘I has principles, and I sticks to ’em like forty,—jest anything that I thinks is principle, I goes in to ’t;—I would n’t mind if dey burnt me ’live,—I ’d walk right up to de stake, I would, and say, here I comes to shed my last blood fur my principles, fur my country, fur der gen’l interests of s’ciety.’

  c.  † Forty pence: a customary amount for a wager. Forty winks (colloq.): a short nap, esp. after dinner.

1567.  Harman, Caveat, viii. 46. And xl. pence gaged vpon a matche of wrastling, pitching of the barre, and casting of the sledge.

1613.  Shaks., Hen. VIII., II. iii. 89. Old. L. How tastes it? is it bitter? forty pence, no.

1872.  Punch, 16 Nov., 208/2. If a conscientious, right-minded man, after reading steadily through the Thirty-Nine Articles, were to take forty winks.

1887.  Sims, Mary Jane’s Mem., 228. I’m tired, and I want my forty winks.

  † d.  = FORTIETH. Obs.

1559.  Homilies, I. Good Wks., III. (1859), 58. Sectes and feigned religions were neither the forty part so many among the Jewes, nor more superstitiously and ungodly abused than of late days they have been among us.

  B.  sb.

  1.  a. The age of 40 years. b. The forties: the years between 40 and 50 of a century or of one’s life.

1732.  Berkeley, Alciphr., I. § 1. Alciphron is above forty, and no stranger either to Men or Books.

1885.  Athenæum, 18 July, 83/1. His magnum opus was published in Edinburgh some time in the forties.

1893.  Geo. Hill, Hist. Eng. Dress, II. 243. What were called half-caps were worn in the early forties; they were circular head-dresses set well back from the front, and trimmed with bunches of ribbons and flowers at each side, over the ears.

  2.  The forty: a designation applied to certain public bodies in various countries and at various periods, from the number of their members; e.g., to several courts of justice in the Venetian republic; to a body of itinerant justices in ancient Attica, empowered to try petty actions; to the French Academy, and (occasionally) to the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

1820.  Byron, Mar. Fal., I. i. 24.

  3.  A yacht of forty tons burden.

1894.  Field, 9 June, 836/1. The two big cutters had left … the two forties many miles astern.

  4.  The roaring forties: the exceptionally rough part of the Atlantic Ocean between 40° and 50° north latitude. Also occasionally applied to that part of the South Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans between 40° and 50° south latitude.

1883.  Buchan, in Encycl. Brit., XVI. 146/2. The region of the ‘brave west winds,’ the ‘roaring forties’ of sailors.

1893.  J. A. Barry, Steve Brown’s Bunyip, 165. Older shipmasters laughed, and, saying that they found the Roaring Forties quite strong enough for them, stuck to the regular merchantman track, not so old yet, they thought, nor so worn by the marks of their keels, as to require a fresh one.

  C.  in Combination.

  1.  Combination of the simple numeral with a sb. (used attrib. or ellipt. as sbs.), and parasynthetic derivatives of these: forty-foot, † (a) = forty legs; (b) see quot. 1889; forty-knot, ‘the Alternanthera Achyrantha, a prostrate amarantaceous weed of warm countries’ (Cent. Dict.); forty legs, a popular or dialectal name of the centipede; † forty pence, ? a jocular designation for a servant who runs errands; forty-penny nail, a nail of such size that one thousand of them weigh forty pounds (see PENNY); † forty penny piece, a coin worth 40 pence Scots, i.e., 3¹/₂d. sterling; forty rod lightning, U.S. slang: see quot.; forty rod whisky = prec.; forty-spot, the Tasmanian name for a bird, Pardalotus quadragintus (Gould, Birds Austr., 1848); forty-tonner = B. 3.

1673.  E. Browne, Trav. Europe (1677), 17. An Indian Scolopendria, or *Forty-foot.

1889.  N. W. Linc. Gloss., Forty-foot, a right of forty-foot which the tenants of certain manors had over the soil of an adjoining manor.

1697.  Dampier, Voy., I. xi. 320. Centapees, call’d by the English *40 Legs.

1750.  G. Hughes, Barbadoes, 89. The Forty-legs in Surinam are a great deal larger than what are bred in Barbados.

1866.  Brogden, Prov. Words Lincolnsh., 73. Forty-legs.—A centipede.

1616.  W. Haughton, English-men for my Money, F iiij a.

1769.  in Hawkesworth, Voy. (1773), II. 182. All kind of fruit we purchased for beads and nails, but no nails less than *fortypenny were current.

c. 1850.  Rudim. Navig. (Weale), 135. Nails of sorts are, 4, 6, 8, 10, 24, 30, and 40-penny nails, all of different lengths, and used for nailing board, &c.

1681.  Colvil, Whigs Supplic. (1741), 46.

1889.  Farmer, Americanisms, *Forty Rod Lightning, whisky of the most villainous description, so called because humorously warranted to kill at forty rods.

1892.  Stevenson & Osbourne, Wrecker, 123–4. I might visit that strange and filthy shed, earth-paved and walled with the cages of wild animals and birds, where at a ramshackle counter, amid the yells of monkeys and a poignant atmosphere of menagerie, *forty-rod whisky was administered by a proprietor as dirty as his beasts.

1895.  Daily News, 11 June, 2/4. For the second match, *forty-tonners, three entered.

  2.  Substantival uses of the compound numerals (see A. 1): forty-eight, a flowerpot of the third smallest size, of which there are 48 in a ‘cast’; forty-four, (a) a forty-four gun ship: (b) a bicycle with a wheel 44 inches in diameter; † forty-nine, a 17th-c. name for some kind of liquor; forty-one Hist., the Venetian council by whom the Doge was elected; forty-two attrib. in forty-two man, a man of the 42nd regiment.

1851.  Glenny, Handbk. Fl. Gard., 227. Those in bottom-heat soon strike root, when they must be potted off into moderately small pots, say *forty-eights.

1821.  Byron, To Murray, 7 Feb. Their evident distress, their reduction to fluttering specks in the distance, their crowded succession, their littleness, as contending with the giant element, which made our stout *forty-four’s teak timbers (she was built in India) creak again.

1884.  Thomas A. Janvier, The Lost Mine, in Century Mag., XXIX. Nov., 55/2. He added, his hand resting easily on the handle of his forty-four: ‘If any man is ahead of me, by ——, I’ll shoot him and jump his claim!’

1692.  A. P[itcairne], Babell, 2 (Maitl., 1830), 5.

1713.  Meston, Knight (1767), 21.

1612.  W. Shute, trans. Fougasses’ Venice, II. 481. The *forty one being assembled (of which number himselfe was one) they without any contradiction chose him Prince.

1816.  Scott, Antiq., xliii. Here comes an old *forty-two man, who is a fitter match for you than I am.

  b.  In abbreviated dates, as forty-one, -two, -three, etc., colloquially used to designate a year of the current or preceding century. Hence forty-niner U.S., one of those who settled in California during the ‘gold fever’ about 1849.

1710.  H. Bedford, Vind. Ch. Eng., 1. As it hath been frequently and justly complain’d of, that the Spirit of Forty-one is reviving in our Days, and those restless Enemies of our Church and State, who lately triumph’d over the Ruins of both, are again endeavouring to play over the Old Game.

1887.  Council Bluffs Herald (Iowa), 17 Jan. Running the ‘pony express’ in the exciting days of the ‘49-ers.’

1890.  Boldrewood, Miner’s Right, xliv. 384. The ball at night, at which the happy pair led off the first dance, was such an entertainment as recalled the ‘brave days of old’ to all old prospectors and ‘forty-niners.’