Currency, persons born in Australia are there termed CURRENCY, while natives of England are termed STERLING. The allusion is to the difference between colonial and imperial moneys, which it may be as well to remark have no difference so far as actual value is concerned.
Curse, anything worthless. Corruption of the Old English word KERSE, a small sour wild cherry; French, CERISE; German, KIRSCH. Vision of Piers Ploughman:—
“Wisdom and witt nowe is not worth a KERSE,
But if it be carded with cootis as clothers
Kembe their woole.”
The expression “not worth a CURSE,” used frequently nowadays, is therefore not properly profane, though it is frequently intensified by a profane expletive. Horne Tooke says from KERSE, or CRESS. The expression “not worth a tinker’s CURSE,” may or may not have arisen from misapplication of the word’s origin, though as now used it certainly means curse in its usual sense. Tinkers do curse, unfortunately, and it will take a good deal of school-board work to educate them out of it, as well as a fair amount of time. The phrase “not worth a tinker’s damn,” is evidently a variation of this, unless indeed it should be spelt “dam,” and used as a reference to the general worthlessness of the wives and mothers of tinkers. This latter is merely offered to those who are speculative in such matters, and is not advanced as an opinion.
Curse of Scotland, the Nine of Diamonds. Various hypotheses have been set up as to this appellation—that it was the card on which the “Butcher Duke” wrote a cruel order with respect to the rebels after the battle of Culloden; that the diamonds are the nine lozenges in the arms of Dalrymple, Earl of Stair, detested for his share in the Massacre of Glencoe; that it is a corruption of Cross of Scotland, the nine diamonds being arranged somewhat after the fashion of a St. Andrew’s Cross. The first supposition is evidently erroneous, for in Dr. Houston’s Memoirs of his own Lifetime, 1747, p. 92, the Jacobite ladies are stated to have nicknamed the Nine of Diamonds “the Justice Clerk,” after the rebellion of 1715, in allusion to the Lord Justice-Clerk Ormistone, who, for his severity in suppressing it, was called the Curse of Scotland. Gules a cross of lozenges were also the arms of Colonel Packer, who attended Charles I. on the scaffold, and commanded in Scotland afterwards with great severity.—See Chatto on the Origin and History of Playing Cards, p. 267. The most probable explanation is, that in the game of Pope Joan the nine of diamonds is the POPE, of whom the Scotch have an especial horror.
Curtail, to cut off. Originally a Cant word—vide Hudibras, and Bacchus and Venus, 1737. Evidently derived from the French court tailler.
Cushion, to hide or conceal.
Cushion-smiter, polite rendering of tub-thumper, a clergyman, a preacher.
Cushmawaunee, never mind. Sailors and soldiers who have been in India frequently say—
“Cushmawaunee,
If we cannot get arrack,
We must drink pawnee.”