subs. (Winchester).—1. A thick fagot or bough: one was included in each bundle of firewood. 2. Any large piece of timber.
3. A generic reproach: thus, BARBER’S-BLOCK (CLERK, or BARBER-MONGER) = a fop; one who spends much time in barbers’ shops; spec. (mechanics) an overdressed shopman or clerk; BARBER’S CAT = a weak, sickly-looking person; BARBER’S-CHAIR = a strumpet (because common to all comers); BARBER’S-MUSIC = rough music. Also (proverbial) ‘Nostrils wider than BARBER’S BASINS.’
1598. SHAKESPEARE, All’s Well that Ends Well, ii. 2. A BARBER’S CHAIR that fits all buttocks; the pin-buttock, the quatch-buttock, the brawn-buttock, or any buttock. Ibid. (1605). King Lear, ii. 2. Draw, you whoreson cullionly BARBER-MONGER, draw.
1621. BURTON, The Anatomy of Melancholy, III. IV. i. 3. (1651), 665. A notorious strumpet as common as a BARBER’S-CHAIR.
1643. RANDOLPH, The Muses’ Looking Glasse.
| With eyes as big as sawcers, NOSTRILS WIDER | |
| THAN BARBERS’ BASONS! |
1660. PEPYS, June 5. My lord called for the lieutenant’s cittern, and with two candlesticks with money in them for symbols (cymbals) we made BARBERS MUSIC.
1708. MOTTEUX, Rabelais, ‘The Pantagruelian Prognostication,’ BARBER’S-CHAIRS, hedge whores.
1823. GROSE, Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue [EGAN], s.v. BARBER’S CHAIR. She is as common as a barber’s chair, in which a whole parish sit to be trimmed.
1835. DICKENS, Sketches by Boz, 155. ‘Tailor!’ screamed a third. ‘BARBER’S-CLERK!’ shouted a fourth.
Verb (university).—To work off an imposition by deputy; also BARBERISE: tradition says that a learned barber was at one time employed as a scapegoat in working off this species of punishment.
1853. REV. E. BRADLEY (‘Cuthbert Bede’), The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman, xii. As for impositions, why … Ain’t there coves to BARBERISE ’em for you?
THAT’S THE BARBER, phr. (old).—‘That’s well done’; ‘It’s all O.K.’ (q.v.): ‘a street catch-phrase about the year 1760’ (GROSE).
