Excellent of its kind. “What sayst thou, bully Bottom?” (‘Mid. Night’s Dream,’ iii. 1). An American collegian is said to have derived the word restaurant from res, a thing, and taurus, a bull, the restaurant being “a bully thing.”
1855. The cook gave us a bully dinner.—Wm. Carleton, ‘Willy Reilly’ (Bartlett).
1855. The witness can’t remember as he hilt any hand at all, with bully hands out, and him the best player in the crowd.—Oregon Weekly Times, July 28.
1860. “New York is a big place, I expect?” “Yes, very big.” “Big as New Orleans, is it?” “Yes, much bigger.” “Bigger’n New Orleans? It must be a bully city.”—Olmsted, ‘Journey in the Back Country,’ p. 171 (N.Y.).
1888. All the boys done bully, but Corporal Johnson—he flinked. The way he flinked was, to wait till the boys had drove the Injuns two miles, and then he hollered, ‘Gin it to ’em!’ and the boys don’t think that a man that would flink that way ought to have corporal’s straps.—Mrs. Custer, ‘Tenting on the Plains,’ p. 680.
