Curaçoa. A liqueur first prepared at the West Indian island of the same name.
Currants. First brought from Corinth.
Cursitor Street. From the Cursitors’ Office that stood here. The Cursitors were clerks of Chancery, but anciently choristers, just as the Lord Chancellor himself was an ecclesiastic.
Curtain Road. From the “Curtain Theatre,” where Ben Jonson’s “Every Man in his Humour” was put on the stage.
Curzon Street. From George Augustus Curzon, created Viscount Howe, the ground landlord.
Cuspidor. The American term for a spittoon, derived from the Spanish escupidor, a spitter.
Cut me to the Quick. The quick of one’s fingers when cut into is most alive or sensitive to pain. See “[Quicksilver].”
Cutpurse. A thief who, in days before pockets came into vogue, had no difficulty in cutting the strings with which a purse was suspended from the girdle.
Cut the Line. A printer’s expression for knocking off work. Formerly compositors finished the line they were composing; nowadays Trades Unionism has made them so particular that they leave off in the middle of a line on the first stroke of the bell.
Cypress. A tree introduced to Western Europe from the island of Cyprus.