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ˈmilch-cow
[milch a.]
1. A cow ‘in milk’; a cow giving milk or kept for milking.
1424in E.E. Wills (1882) 57, I wul my wyf haf half my mylche kye. c1440Promp. Parv. 337/2 Mylche cowe, bassario, vel vacca mulsaria. 1523Fitzherb. Husb. §70 Melch kye and draught oxen, wyll eate a close moche barer than as many fatte kye and oxen. 1583Stubbes Anat. Abus. ii. (1882) 47 And so solde the former barren cowe with hir adulterate calfe, for a melch cowe. 1596Shakes. Tam. Shr. ii. i. 359, I haue a hundred milch-kine to the pale. 1879J. Hingston Australian Abr. ix. 102 China, as a Nation, is as weak and defenceless now as a milch cow.
transf.1816Kirby & Sp. Entomol. xvii. (1818) II. 65 Aphides and Cocci, which are the milch kine of our little pismires.
2. fig. A source of regularly-accruing gain or profit; esp. a person from whom money is easily drawn, one who ‘bleeds freely’. (So F. vache à lait.)
1601J. Wheeler Treat. Comm. 40 So profitable a Milch-cowe as the English Trade was vnto the Lowe Countries. 1617Chamberlain Let. in Ct. & Times Jas. I, II. 8 That he had been a good milch cow to Dixon..and that he had yielded {pstlg}200 a year. a1700B. E. Dict. Cant. Crew, Milch-kine, a Term us'd by Goalers, when their Prisoners will bleed freely to have some Favor, or be at large. 1712Arbuthnot John Bull i. xii, John's cause was a good milch cow, and many a man subsisted his family out of it. 1885Ch. Times 18 Dec. 993/4 The..private patron..far more frequently viewed his advowson as a milch-cow for his private profit. |