bite on the bridle, to be impatient of restraint. Gascoigne, i. 449, l. 25.
bitter, bittour, a bittern. Bitter, Middleton, Triumph of Love, ed. Dyce, v. 289; bittour, Chapman, tr. of Odyssey, v. 89; Dryden, Wife of Bath’s Tale, 194; Coles, Dict. (1679). ME. bitore (Chaucer, C. T. D. 972); OF. butor, a bittern (Hatzfeld).
bizzle, to become drunk, to drink to excess. Dekker, Honest Wh., Pt. II, iii. 1 (Matheo). See [bezzle].
black: phr. black is your eye. To say ‘black is your eye’, to find fault with one, to lay something to his charge. ‘I can say, black’s your eye, though it be grey’, Beaumont and Fl., Love’s Cure, iii. 1 (Alguazier); ‘black’s mine eye’, Middleton, Blurt, Mr. Constable, i. 2 (Blurt).
black guard, orig. a jocular name given to the lower menials of a noble house, esp. those who had charge of kitchen utensils, and carried them about when required; ‘A lousy slave, that within this twenty years rode with the black guard in the duke’s carriage [i.e. among his baggage], ’mongst spits and dripping-pans’, Webster, White Devil, ed. Dyce, p. 8; Fletcher, Woman-hater, i. 3 (Lazarillo).
black jack, a leathern jug for beer, tarred outside. Beaumont and Fl., Scornful Lady, ii. 2 (Savil); Middleton, The Witch, i. 1 (Gasparo).
black-mack, a blackbird; ‘A leane birde of the kind of blacke-mackes’, Udall, tr. of Apoph., Augustus, § 34; ‘Merula, a birde called a black-mack, an owzell, a mearle, or black-bird’, Florio.
black ox; ‘The Black Ox has trod on his foot, he has fallen on misfortune or sorrow’, Lyly, Sapho and Phao, iv. 1; Heywood, Eng. Prov. (ed. Farmer, 112). See Nares, and EDD. (s.v. Black, 5 (11)).
black-pot, a beer-mug; hence, a toper. Greene, Friar Bacon, ii. 2 (scene 5, W.), at the end; p. 160, col. 2 (D.).
blacks, mourning clothes. Fletcher, Mons. Thomas, iii. 1 (Francisco); Maid in a Mill, iv. 2 (Bustopha); Bacon, Essay 2; Massinger, Fatal Dowry, ii. 1 (Charalois); Herrick, Hesperides, 379. In prov. use; see EDD. (s.v. Black, sb.1 4).