- skip - Brewer’s

Coach (A)

.

A private tutor. The term is a pun on getting on fast. To get on fast you take a coach, you cannot get on fast without a private tutor—ergo, a private tutor is the coach you take in order that you may get on quickly. (University slang.)

“The books … are expensive, and often a further expense is entailed by the necessity of securing ‘a coach.ʹ”—Stedman Oxford, chap. x. p. 188.

To dine in the coach. In the captain’s private room. The coach or couch of a ship is a small apartment near the stern, the floor being formed of the aftmost part of the quarter-deck, and the roof by the poop.

A slow coach. A dull, unprogressive person, somewhat fossilised.


“What a dull, old-fashioned chap thou best but thou wert always a slow-coach.”—Mrs. Gaskell: Cibbie Marsh (Era 2).

 

previous entry · index · next entry

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

previous entry · index · next entry

Club-law
Clue
Clumsy (Norwegian, klump, a lump, Swedish, klummsen, benumbed; Icelandic, klumsa)
Cluricaune
Clydesdale Horses
Clym of the Clough
Clyttie
Cneph
Cnidian Venus (The)
Co
Coach (A)
Coach-and-four (or Coach-and-six)
Coach-and-pair (A)
Coach Away
Coached Up
Coal
Coal Brandy
Coals
Coals of Fire
Coaling
Coalition Government