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Brewer's: Green Labour

The lowest-paid labour in the tailoring trade. Such garments are sold to African gold-diggers and agricultural labourers. Soap and shoddy do more for these garments than cotton or cloth. (…

Brewer's: Carpocratians

Gnostics; so called from Carpocrates, who flourished in the middle of the second century. They maintained that the world was made by angels,- that only the soul of Christ ascended into…

Brewer's: Cross-grained

Patchy, ill-tempered, self-willed. Wood must be worked with the grain; when the grain crosses we get a knot or curling, which is hard to work uniform. Source: Dictionary of Phrase and…

Brewer's: Cross Man

(A). Not straightforward; ungain; not honest. “The storekeepers know who are their best customers, the square people or the cross ones.” —Boldrewood: Robbery Under Arms, chap. xvii.…

Brewer's: Dinnerless

Their hosts are the cross-legged knights. That is, the stone effigies of the Round Church. In this church at one time lawyers met their clients, and here a host of vagabonds used to loiter…

Brewer's: Quixada

(Gutierre). Lord of Villagarcia. He discharged a javelin at Sire de Haburdin with such force as to pierce the left shoulder, overthrow the knight, and pin him to the ground. Don Quixote…

Brewer's: Red Rot

(The). The Sun-dew (q.v.); so called because it occasions the rot in sheep. Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894Red SeaRed Rose Knight A B C D E F G H I…

Brewer's: Pridwin

Same as pridwen. This shield had represented on it a picture of the Virgin. The temper of his sword, the tried `Excaliber,' The bigness and the length of `Rone,' his noble spear, With `…

Brewer's: Trencher Friends

Persons who cultivate the friendship of others for the sake of sitting at their board, and the good things they can get. Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer,…

Brewer's: Trenchmore

A popular dance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. “Nimble-heeled mariners ... capering ... sometimes a Morisco, or Trenchmore of forty miles long.” —Taylor the Water-Poet.…