1793.—"Every horse ... has two attendants, one who cleans and takes care of him, called the horse-keeper, and the other the grasscutter, who provides for his forage."—Dirom's Narr. 242.
1846.—"Every horse has a man and a maid to himself—the maid cuts grass for him; and every dog has a boy. I inquired whether the cat had any servants, but I found he was allowed to wait upon himself."—Letters from Madras, 37.
[1850.—"Then there are our servants ... four Saises and four Ghascuts ..."—Mrs. Mackenzie, Life in the Mission, ii. 253.]
1875.—"I suppose if you were to pick up ... a grasscutter's pony to replace the one you lost, you wouldn't feel that you had done the rest of the army out of their rights."—The Dilemma, ch. xxxvii.
[GRASSHOPPER FALLS, n.p. An Anglo-Indian corruption of the name of the great waterfall on the Sheravati River in the Shimoga District of Mysore, where the river plunges down in a succession of cascades, of which the principal is 890 feet in height. The proper name of the place is Gersoppa, or Gerusappe, which takes its name from the adjoining village; geru, Can., 'the marking nut plant' (semecarpus anacardium, L.), soppu, 'a leaf.' See Mr. Grey's note on P. della Valle, Hak. Soc. ii. 218.]
GRASS-WIDOW, s. This slang phrase is applied in India, with a shade of malignity, to ladies living apart from their husbands, especially as recreating at the Hill stations, whilst the husbands are at their duties in the plains.
We do not know the origin of the phrase. In the Slang Dictionary it is explained: "An unmarried mother; a deserted mistress." But no such opprobrious meanings attach to the Indian use. In Notes and Queries, 6th ser. viii. 414, will be found several communications on this phrase. [Also see ibid. x. 436, 526; xi. 178; 8th ser. iv. 37, 75.] We learn from these that in Moor's Suffolk Words and Phrases, Grace-Widow occurs with the meaning of an unmarried mother. Corresponding to this, it is stated also, is the N.S. (?) or Low German gras-wedewe. The Swedish Gräsänka or -enka also is used for 'a low dissolute married woman living by herself.' In Belgium a woman of this description is called haecke-wedewe, from haecken, 'to feel strong desire' (to 'hanker'). And so it is suggested gräsenka is contracted from grädesenka, from gradig, 'esuriens' (greedy, in fact). In Danish Dict. graesenka is interpreted as a woman whose betrothed lover is dead. But the German Stroh-Wittwe, 'straw-widow' (which Flügel interprets as 'mock widow'), seems rather inconsistent with the suggestion that grass-widow is a corruption of the kind suggested. A friend mentions that the masc. Stroh-Wittwer is used in Germany for a man whose wife is absent, and who therefore dines at the eating-house with the young fellows. [The N.E.D. gives the two meanings: 1. An unmarried woman who has cohabited with one or more men; a discarded mistress; 2. A married woman whose husband is absent from her. "The etymological notion is obscure, but the parallel forms disprove the notion that the word is a 'corruption' of grace-widow. It has been suggested that in sense 1. grass (and G. stroh) may have been used with opposition to bed. Sense 2. may have arisen as an etymologizing interpretation of the compound after it had ceased to be generally understood; in Eng. it seems to have first appeared as Anglo-Indian." The French equivalent, Veuve de Malabar, was in allusion to Lemierre's tragedy, produced in 1770.]
1878.—"In the evening my wife and I went out house-hunting; and we pitched upon one which the newly incorporated body of Municipal Commissioners and the Clergyman (who was a Grass-widower, his wife being at home) had taken between them."—Life in the Mofussil, ii. 99-100.
1879.—The Indian newspaper's "typical official rises to a late breakfast—probably on herrings and soda-water—and dresses tastefully for his round of morning calls, the last on a grass-widow, with whom he has a tête-à-tête tiffin, where 'pegs' alternate with champagne."—Simla Letter in Times, Aug. 16.
1880.—"The Grass-widow in Nephelococcygia."—Sir Ali Baba, 169.