LOAFER. We think there can be no doubt that this word is German. Laufen in some parts of Germany is pronounced lofen, and we once heard a German student say to his friend, Ich lauf' (lofe) hier bis du wiederkehrst: and he began accordingly to saunter up and down,—in short, to loaf about.
TO MULL. "To soften, to dispirit." Mr. Bartlett quotes Margaret,—"There has been a pretty considerable mullin going on among the doctors." But mullin here means stirring, bustling in an underhand way, and is a metaphor derived from mulling wine. Mull, in this sense, is probably a corruption of mell, from Old Fr. mesler, to mix.
TO BE NOWHERE (in the sense of failure) is not an Americanism, but Turf-Slang.
SALLY-LUN, a kind of cake, is English.
TO SAVE, meaning to kill game so as to get it, is not confined to the
Far West, but is common to hunters in all parts of the country.
SHEW, for showed. Mr. Bartlett calls this the "shibboleth of Bostonians." However this may be, it is simply an archaism, not a vulgarism. Show, like blow, crow, grow, seems formerly to have had what is called a strong preterite. Shew is used by Lord Cromwell and Hector Boece.
SLASHES. "Swampy or wet lands overgrown with bushes. Southern and
Western." Used also in New York.
SPAN of horses is Dutch (High or Low).
TO WALK SPANISH; to "walk" a boy out of any place by the waistband of his trousers, or by any lower part easily prehensible. N.E. This is, perhaps, as old as Philip and Mary.
TO SPREAD ONE'S SELF is defined by Mr. Bartlett "to exert one's self." It means rather to exert one's self ostentatiously. It is a capital metaphor, derived, we fancy, from the turkey-cock or peacock,—like the Italian pavoneggiarsi. We find in the Tatler "spreading her graces in assemblies." This last, however, may be a Gallicism, from étaler.