subs. (common).—A coachman; a driver. [From 2 Kings ix, 20.]
1660. J. CROUCH, A Mixt Poem … upon the Happy Return of … Charles the Second, p. 9. Now the restor’d Rump, JEHU-like drives on.
1681. DRYDEN, The Medal, 119. But this new JEHU spurs the hot mouthed horse.
1694. CONGREVE, The Double Dealer, iii. 10. Our JEHU was a hackny coachman, when my Lord took him.
1759. GOLDSMITH, The Bee, No. 5, p. 388 (Globe ed.). Our figure now began to expostulate: he assured the coachman, that though his baggage seemed so bulky, it was perfectly light…. But JEHU was inflexible.
1811. GROSE and CLARKE, Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v. JEHU.
1841. MACAULAY, Comic Dramatists of the Reformation [quoted in Century]. A pious man … may call a keen foxhunter a Nimrod … and Cowper’s friend, Newton, would speak of a neighbour who was given to driving as JEHU.
1846–8. THACKERAY, Vanity Fair, vii. The worthy Baronet whom he drove to the city did not give him one single penny more than his fare. It was in vain that JEHU appealed and stormed.
1855. LADY HOLLAND, Sidney Smith, vi. She soon … raised my wages, and considered me an excellent JEHU.
1860. Punch, iii. 177. The JEHUS who drive.
1889. Daily Telegraph, 5 Jan. For some time past the JEHUS of Paris have betrayed a lamentable ignorance of metropolitan topography.
