subs. (common).—The sea; specifically, the North Atlantic Ocean. See BRINY and PUDDLE. TO BE SENT ACROSS THE HERRING-POND = to be transported.
1700. England’s Path to Wealth and Honour. ’Tis odds but a finer country, cheaper and better food and raiment, wholesomer air, easier rents and taxes, will tempt many of your countrymen to cross the HERRING-POND.
1729. GAY, Polly, i., 1. Bless us all! how little are our customs known on this side the HERRING-POND!
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v.
1823. BADCOCK (‘Jon Bee’), Dictionary of the Turf, etc., s.v. HERRING-POND—the sea, the Atlantic; and he who is gone across it is said to be lagged, or gone a Botanizing.
1830. BULWER-LYTTON, Paul Clifford, p. 256, ed. 1854. You’re too old a hand for the HERRING-POND.
1864. M. E. BRADDON, Henry Dunbar, ch. xxv. You’re not going to run away? You’re not going to renounce the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and make an early expedition across the HERRING-POND—eh?
1884. PHILLLPPS-WOLLEY, Trottings of a Tenderfoot, ch. i. Everybody nowadays has read as much as he or she cares to about the voyage across the ‘HERRING-POND.’
1889. Notes and Queries, 7 S., vii., p. 36, c. 2. Terms which have lived in America, and again crossed the HERRING-POND with modern traffic.
1890. Punch, 6 Feb. Saturday.—My connection with war ended. Calculate I start to-morrow with the Show across the HERRING-POND, to wake up the Crowned Heads of Europe!
1890. A. C. GUNTER, Miss Nobody of Nowhere, ch. xvii. If so, I’ll—I’ll cut him, when I cross the—er—HERRIN’ POND.
1892. HUME NISBET, The Bushranger’s Sweetheart, p. 119. I guess we have ruined one or two well-known authors, on the other side of the HERRING POND.
