ENGLISH SYNONYMS. Aboriginal; ‘ah! don’t mingle’; as it came from its mother; bald-faced; bare-footed; clean from the still; cold-without; in puris naturalibus; in a state of nature; naked; neat as imported; neat; simplex munditiis; out of the barrel; plain; primitive; pure; raw; raw recruit; reverend; stark-naked; straight; stripped; unalloyed; unmarried; unsophisticated; uncorrupted; untempered; virgin; without a shirt.
1598. JONSON, Every Man in his Humour, iv. 4. We’ll go to the Windmill: there we shall have a cup of NEAT grist, we call it.
1653. URQUHART, Rabelais, I., iii. [BOHN, i., 106]. He loved to drink NEAT, as much as any man that then was in the world.
1711. STEELE, Spectator, No. 264. The hogsheads of NEAT port came safe.
1742. FIELDING, Joseph Andrews, III., iii. My wines, which I never adulterated after their importation, and were sold as NEAT as they came over.
1751. SMOLLETT, Peregrine Pickle, viii. He … judged the cordial to be no other than NEAT Cogniac.
1851–61. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, i., 397. I was obliged to drink rum; it wouldn’t ha’ done to ha’ drunk the water NEAT, there was so many insects in it.
1876. BESANT and RICE, The Golden Butterfly, i. I should take a small glass of brandy NEAT. Mind, no spoiling the effect with water.
AS NEAT AS (A BANDBOX, A NEW PIN, WAX, NINEPENCE), phr. (colloquial).—As neat as may be.
1884. W. E. HENLEY and R. L. STEVENSON, Deacon Brodie, iii., 3 (Three Plays, 36). We’ve nobbled him, AS NEAT AS NINEPENCE.
NEAT, BUT NOT GAUDY: AS THE DEVIL SAID WHEN HE PAINTED HIS BOTTOM RED, AND TIED UP HIS TAIL WITH SKY-BLUE RIBBON, phr. (common).—Spick and span; ‘fresh as a daisy.’
1887. Lippincott’s Magazine, July, p. 116. I have sent, I say, just such manuscript as editors call for, fair, clean, written on one side, not with a pencil, but with a good gold pen, stamps enclosed for return if declined; the whole thing ‘NEAT, BUT NOT GAUDY, as the monkey said’ on the memorable occasion ‘when he painted his tail sky-blue.’
1892. Society, 6 Aug., p. 757, col. 1. Tennyson when in a rage is NEAT AND NOT GAUDY.
