subs. phr. (common).—A bug.
[From (says John Camden Hotten) an advt. in Times, 23 June 1862, as follows:—I, Norfolk Howard, heretofore called and known by the name of Joshua Bug, late of Epsom, in the county of Surrey, now of Wakefield, in the county of York, and landlord of the Swan Tavern, in the same county, do hereby give notice that on the 20th day of this present month of June, for and on behalf of myself and heirs, lawfully begotten, I did wholly abandon the use of the surname of Bug and assumed, took, and used, and am determined … to be called and known by the name of Norfolk Howard only … duly enrolled by me in the High Court of Chancery.—Dated this 23 day of June, 1862.—NORFOLK HOWARD, late JOSHUA BUG.—Diligent search in the Times of the date mentioned has failed to unearth the document. At the same time it is certain that a Joshua Bug lived at Epsom about the date mentioned.]
1870. Figaro, 19 Oct. Those entomological pests that are euphemistically called NORFOLK HOWARDS. Ibid., 1871, 26 Dec. A traveller at a hotel, while registering his name, saw a lively NORFOLK HOWARD making his way briskly across the page. In consternation he declared that he had … never before stopped at a place where a NORFOLK HOWARD looked over the hotel register to see where his room was.
1872. Era, 27 July. Negligent domestic servants, lodging-house keepers, bathing arrangements, bad drainage, NORFOLK HOWARDS, careless boatmen, and a thousand other topics will be seized upon as pegs on which to hang a series of grumblings.
1885. G. A. SALA, in Daily Telegraph, 14 Aug., 573. ‘Bed bugs,’ the convertible term for which is ‘chintzes,’ are the disagreeable insects known in modern polite English as NORFOLK HOWARDS.
1892. Society, 6 Aug., 757/1. Such writers as this, says the lord of verse, are the lice on the locks of literature. Also I should presume they are the flea down the back of Poetry, and the NORFOLK HOWARD in the shirt of Art.
2. In pl. (military).—The Norfolk Regiment, formerly the 9th Foot.
