or alivo, subs. phr. (common).—1. A fly-paper. [In allusion to the sticky substance smeared over the paper which, attracting the flies, literally ‘catches them alive.’]
1851–61. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. iii., p. 38. They used to … call ’em Egyptian flypapers, but now they use merely the word ‘flypapers,’ or ‘fly-destroyers,’ or ‘fly-catchers,’ or ‘CATCH ’EM ALIVE, OH’S.’
1857. DICKENS, Little Dorrit, wks. I., ch. xvi., 122 And such coats of varnish that every holy personage served for a fly trap, and became what is now called in the vulgar tongue a CATCH-EM-ALIVE, O.
1890. Globe, 16 April, p. 1, col. 3. Typhoid microbes take as kindly to sluggish waters as flies do to CATCH-EM-ALIVE-OH’S.
2. (common).—A tooth-comb; a ‘louse-trap.’
3. (general).—The female pudendum.
