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Swinge-buckler

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A roisterer, a rake. The continuation of Stow’s Annals tells us that the “blades” of London used to assemble in West Smithfield with sword and buckler, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, on high days and holidays, for mock fights called “bragging” fights. They swashed and swinged their bucklers with much show of fury, “but seldome was any man hurt.” (See Swashbuckler.)

“There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele a Cotswold man; you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the Inns-of-court; and, I may say to you, we knew where the bona-robas were.”—Shakespeare: 2 Henry IV., iii. 2.

 

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

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Sweet Singers
Sweet Voices
Sweetheart
Swell Mob
Swi Dynasty
Swift
Swim (In the)
Swindle
Swine
Swing (Captain)
Swinge-buckler
Swiss
Swiss Boy (The)
Swiss Family Robinson
Swithin (St.)
Switzers
Sword
Sword-makers
Sword Excalibar (The)
Sword of God (The)
Sword of Rome (The)

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Swashbuckler