big boyn.

1572 J. Higgins Huloets Dict. (rev. ed.) at Sonne and Moone A playe that chyldren & bigge boyes vse to playe, wherein twoo companies drawe, th'one one waye and th' other an other, till one part giue the other the foyle.

1594 R. Wilson Coblers Prophesie sig. E4^v For the childe she had by Venus chaplin, Is a big boy and followes the Father.

1728 Addr. People called Quakers 5 Mr. Dodwell, was a big Boy at School..in the Year of our Lord 1650, when your People made their first Appearance in the World.

1779 A. L. Barbauld Lessons for Children 3 Years Old I. 78 If he had been a big boy I suppose he would have been wiser.

1833 H. Martineau Tale of Tyne ii. 33 The big boys used to plague him, and he plagued the little ones.

1857 J. Fiske Let. 4 Apr. (1940) 14 Following this unusual performance, the ‘little boys’ adjourned to bed, and the ‘big boys’ and the company adjourned to the parlor.

1926 J. Black You can't Win i. 2 At the age of fourteen..I am leaving to go..to another school for ‘big boys’.

1964 ‘C. E. Maine’ Never let Up xv. 148 I'm a big boy now and I can put myself to bed. So why don't you do as I say.

2004 Independent (Compact ed.) 21 Apr. (Review section) 2/1 The hypocrisy of politicians. I'm a big boy now so I ought to be used to it, but their lies still surprise me.

2005 E. Barr Plan B (2006) xiv. 149 He's a big boy. I'll text him. He'll be fine.

1918 A. P. McKishnie Willow xx. 279 ‘Hold on, Big Boy,’ he called.

1939 J. B. Priestley Let People Sing iv. 94 ‘Am I right, sirs?’ ‘You sure are, big boy.’

2006 Tampa (Florida) Tribune (Nexis) 10 Feb. 1 Sit down next to him and cross your legs. All soft and sultry, say, ‘Hey, big boy, new in town?’

1921 Decatur (Illinois) Daily Rev. 2 May 4/3 The Staley baseball and football teams are being operated along legitimate lines and the big boys know it even if our dear friends in the Evergreen City don't.

1929 W. R. Burnett Little Caesar i. i. 12 The Big Boy can't fix murder. He can fix anything but murder.

1930 Ireton (Iowa) Ledger 7 Aug. 1/1 The Sioux Falls Canaries will meet the Spencer, Iowa, Cubs, also an exceedingly fast semi-pro aggregation who are playing with the big boys.

1940 Times Weekly 27 Nov. 10 We had one of the really ‘big boys’ on board—the brother of the one I dropped at Munich.

1978 Washington Post (Nexis) 25 June 44 With a wine list and $6 main dishes, Yes! is playing with the big boys.

2006 Office Products Internat. (Nexis) 1 Oct. 32 Tesco, Wal-Mart and the rest of the mass-market retailers are the big boys of the retail world.

1917 Oakland (Calif.) Tribune 11 Mar. (Mag.) 8/2 They will be able to slip to sea, under the protection of shore guns... With the ‘big boys’ on shore holding off a hostile fleet, the warships can go out fearless of anything save the submarine.

1917 Lake County Times (Hammond, Indiana) 26 June 1/2 I was placed as the man to fire the gun on the 12-incher, and believe me, those big boys certainly do bark.

1918 Lowell (Mass.) Sun 6 May 10/2 It is the most awful sensation I ever dreamed of to hear one of those big boys coming, louder and louder each second and not knowing where it is going to land.

1924 T. H. Barber Along the Road 18 Five ‘big boys’ roared over our heads like elevated trains, to burst in the valley below.

1959 J. Toland Battle iii. iv. 250 All my tanks had been knocked out except two Big Boys and one light.

1970 C. B. Flood War of Innocents 193 We had some self-propelled 155-millimeter ‘Big Boys’..in addition to the usual six 105-millimeter guns.

2009 L. R. Maleck What am I doing Here? ix. 142 One observer called for all available artillery battalions, and got a total of nine battalions, some of them the ‘big boys’ meaning the 8 inch and 155mm guns firing from miles away.

1946 Middletown (N.Y.) Times Herald 24 July 11/3 The ‘big boy’ itself was to be taken into the lagoon after the USS Appalachian..led the evacuation of about 30,000 men through rows of doomed ships.

1954 San Mateo (Calif.) Times 21 June 14/6 The big boy is 10 to 20 or 30 times as powerful as the A-bomb.

1980 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 23 Sept. a16/1 35 years ago he helped build ‘Big Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’, the first atomic bombs used in war.

1993 St. Louis (Missouri) Post-Dispatch (Nexis) 6 Mar. (Mag.) 3 The museum also has the original model for ‘Big Boy’, the A-Bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

1995 L. Gerber in Southwestern Amer. Lit. Fall 96 My dad..was participating in Operation Redwing in the Marshall Islands. He says that he watched the ‘big boys’, meaning he witnessed the hydrogen bombs.