This is not the only instance of the word being used by the immortal bard. “I once heard,” said the Dean just quoted, “a venerable dignitary pointed out by a railway porter as an old PARTY in a shovel.” The last word is the vulgar term applied to the peculiar hat worn by clerical dignitaries.
Pash, to strike; now corrupted to [BASH], which see.—Shakspeare.
Paste, to beat, to thrash vigorously.
Pasteboard, a visiting card; “to PASTEBOARD a person,” to drop a card at an absent person’s house.
Paste-horn, the nose. Shoemakers nickname any shopmate with a large nose “old PASTE-HORN,” from the shape of the horn in which they keep their paste.
Pasty, a bookbinder.
Patch. This old English term of reproach, long obsolete in polite language, may yet occasionally be heard in sentences like these:—“Why, he’s not a PATCH upon him,” i.e., he is not to be compared with him; “one’s not a PATCH on the other,” &c. Shakspeare uses the word in the sense of a paltry fellow:—
“What a pied ninny’s this? thou scurvy PATCH!”
In old English PATCH meant a fool, a wearer of patched clothes of motley.