释义 |
cold meat [cold a. 2 b.] 1. Cooked meat that has become cold; hence sometimes used to connote inferior fare. Also attrib.
1598Servingman's Comfort H, The remayne of these cold boyled meates..which may well be called colde Commons. 1795‘A Lady’ tr. Moritz's Travels 240, I dined here on cold meat and sallad. 1816Jane Austen Emma III. vi. 88 When you are tired of eating strawberries in the garden, there shall be cold meat in the house. 1894Daily News 15 Sept. 3/2 It is hard to be treated like ‘cold meat company’. 1909Daily Chron. 24 Aug. 1/5 There is a run on cold-meat shops. 2. slang. A corpse; corpses. Chiefly attrib., as cold-meat box (coffin), cold meat-cart (hearse), cold meat-party (funeral or wake), cold meat-train (funeral train).
1788Grose Dict. Vulgar T. (ed. 2) sig. G3, A dead wife is the best cold meat in a man's house. 1819Moore Tom Crib's Mem. 25 In the Twelfth and Last Round Sandy fetch'd him a downer, That left him all's one as cold meat for the Crowner. 1820‘P. Corcoran’ Fancy 46 He's for the cold meat cart, and so am I. 1837Dickens Pickw. xix, ‘You mustn't handle your piece in that ere way..I'm damned if you won't make cold meat of some on us.’ 1845tr. Sue's Myst. Paris I. iii. 28 ‘I have already a bad cough.’ ‘Ah, I see you already in the cold-meat box.’ 1874Hotten Slang Dict., Cold meat train. 1889Sporting Times 3 Aug. 1/3, I should just come in where you were lying in the cold-meat box. 1908J. M. Sullivan Crim. Slang 1 A cold meat party—a wake. 1924G. C. Henderson Keys to Crookdom 401 Cold-meat party, funeral, wake. 1944‘N. Shute’ Pastoral v. 107 But for the Grace of God..they'd all have been cold meat. |