subs. (old).—1. A hurry: hence TO PELT (or GO FULL PELT) = to go as hard or as fast as may be.
1843. DICKENS, A Christmas Carol. The clerk … ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could PELT, to play at blindman’s-buff.
2. (common).—A rage; a passion; a blow: also PELTER. As verb. = to be violently angry; PELTING (or OUT FOR A PELTER) = very angry, passionate.—B. E. (c. 1696); GROSE (1785).
1594. SHAKESPEARE, The Rape of Lucrece [MALONE, Supplement, i. 554]. Another smother’d seems to PELT and swear.
1608. E. TOPSELL, The Historie of Serpents, 250. In a PELTING chafe she brake all to peaces the wenches imagery worke.
1632. J. VICARS, The XII Aeneids of Virgil, IX., p. 280.
| To fire the same, Troyes Ilioneus brave | |
| With a huge stone a deadly PELT him gave. |
1677. E. RAVENSCROFT, The Wrangling Lovers, 54. That the Letter, which put you into such a PELT, came from another.
1688. J. GRUBB, The British Heroes [PERCY, Reliques], line 99. George hit th’ dragon such a PELT.
1697. E. FILMER, The Unnatural Brother. Which put her ladyship into a horrid PELT.
1819. T. MOORE, Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress, 23. But a PELT in the smellers … set it going like fun.
1865. H. KINGSLEY, The Hillyars and the Burtons, iii. I wasn’t really in a PELTER.
3. (colloquial).—The skin.
1694–6. DRYDEN, Virgil, Georgic, iii. 672. A scabby tetter on their PELTS will stick.
4. (old).—A miser; a stingy fellow: also PELTER.
1552. HULOET, Dictionary, s.v. A PELT or pinchbecke.
1577. T. KENDALL, Flowers of Epigrammes, 4.
| The veriest PELTER pilde maie seme, | |
| To haue experience thus. |
1587. GASCOIGNE, Flowers, A Gloze vpon this Text, Dominus ejus opus habet.
| Yea let suche PELTERS prate, sainte Needam be their speede, | |
| We neede no text to answer them, but this, The Lord hath nede. |
5. (old).—Clothes; sometimes in pl.: spec. garments made of ‘peltry’ = the furs of beasts.
1567. HARMAN, A Caveat or Warening for Common Cursetors [E.E.T.S. (1869), 76]. Many wyll plucke of their smockes, and laye the same vpon them in stede of their vpper sheete, and all her other PELTE and trashe vpon her also.
1585. FLEMING, The Nomenclator [NARES]. A PELT, or garments made of wolves and beares skin, which nobles in old time used to weare.
1630. TAYLOR (‘The Water Poet’), Workes [NARES].
| For they from sundry men their PELTS can pull, | |
| Whereby they keepe themselues as warme as wooll. |
Verb. 1. See subs., sense 2.
2. (tailors’).—To sew thickly.
