BLACK-STRAP, port wine.
BLADE, a man—in ancient times the term for a soldier; “knowing BLADE,” a wide awake, sharp, or cunning man.
BLACKGUARD, a low, or dirty fellow.
“A cant word amongst the vulgar, by which is implied a dirty fellow of the meanest kind, Dr. Johnson says, and he cites only the modern authority of Swift. But the introduction of this word into our language belongs not to the vulgar, and is more than a century prior to the time of Swift. Mr. Malone agrees with me in exhibiting the two first of the following examples. The black-guard is evidently designed to imply a fit attendant on the devil. Mr. Gifford, however, in his late edition of Ben Jonson’s works, assigns an origin of the name different from what the old examples which I have cited seem to countenance. It has been formed, he says, from those ‘mean and dirty dependants, in great houses, who were selected to carry coals to the kitchen, halls, &c. To this smutty regiment, who attended the progresses, and rode in the carts with the pots and kettles, which, with every other article of furniture, were then moved from palace to palace, the people, in derision, gave the name of black guards; a term since become sufficiently familiar, and never properly explained.’—Ben Jonson, ii. 169, vii. 250”—Todd’s Johnson’s Dictionary.
BLARNEY, flattery, exaggeration.—Hibernicism.
BLAST, to curse.
BLAZES, “like BLAZES,” furious or desperate, a low comparison.
BLEST, a vow; “BLEST if I’ll do it,” i.e., I am determined not to do it; euphemism for CURST.
BLEED, to victimise, or extract money from a person, to spunge on, to make suffer vindictively.
BLEW, or BLOW, to inform, or peach.