or pursive, adj. (old: now colloquial).—1. Rich; (2) fat with well-being; and (3) short-winded.—B. E. (c. 1696); GROSE (1785).
1440. Promptorium Parvulorum [Camden Society]. PURCY in wynd drawynge.
1596. SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet, iii. 4. The fatness of these PURSY times.
1607. W. S., The Puritaine, i. iv. I … by chance set upon a fat steward, thinking his purse had been as PURSY as his body; and the slave had about him the poor purchase of ten groats.
18[?]. H. LUTTRELL, May Fair (1827), II. 16.
| Of tedious M. P.’s, PURSY peers, | |
| Illustrious for their length of ears. |
1820. IRVING, The Sketch-Book, 264. A short PURSY man, stooping and laboring at a bass-viol, so as to show nothing but the top of a round bald head, like the egg of an ostrich.
d. 1832. CRABBE, Works, iv. 12, ‘The Dumb Orators.’
| Slothful and PURSY, insolent and mean, | |
| Were every bishop, prebendary, dean. |
1874. BEETON, The Siliad, xiv. The PURSY man, whose Capital’s his God.
