Chapter Skin to Slave of S by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Sky To elevate, ennoble, raise. It is a term in ballooning; when the ropes are cut, the balloon mounts upwards to the skies. (See Skied .)

“We found the same distinguished personage doing his best to sky some dozen or so of his best friends [referring to the peers made by Gladstone].”- The Times, November 16, 1869.

   If the sky falls we shall catch larks. A bantering reply to those who suggest some very improbable or wild scheme.

Sky-blue Milk and water, the colour of the skies.

“Its name derision and reproach pursue,
And strangers tell of three times skimmed sky-blue.”
Bloomfield: Farmer's Boy.

Sky-rakers, strictly speaking, is a sail above the fore-royal, the main-royal, or the mizzen-royal, more frequently called “sky-scrapers.” In general parlance any top-sail is so called.

“Dashed by the strange wind's sport, we were sunk deep in the green sea's trough; and before we could utter an ejaculatory prayer, were upheaved upon the crown of some fantastic surge, peering our sky- rakers into the azure vault of heaven.”- C. Thomson: Autobiography, p. 120.

Skye (Isle of) means the isle of gaps or indentations (Celtic, skyb, a gap). Hence also the Skibbereen of Cork, which is Skyb-bohreen, the byway gap, a pass in a mountain to the sea.

Skylark A spree.

Skylark, among sailors, is to mount the highest yards (called sky-scrapers), and then slide down the ropes for amusement. (See Lark .)

Slander, Offence Slander is a stumbling-block or something which trips a person up (Greek, skandalon, through the French esclandre). Offence is the striking of our foot against a stone (Latin, ob fendo, as scopulum offendit navis, the ship struck against a rock).

Slang Slangs are the greaves with which the legs of convicts are fettered; hence convicts themselves; and slang is the language of convicts.

Slang The difficulty of tracing the fons et origo of slang words is extremely great, as there is no law to guide one. Generally, a perversion and a pun may be looked for, as Monseingueur = toe (q.v.), Monpensier = ventre (i.e. mon-panse, my paunch or belly), etc. (See Sandis, Squash, and numerous other examples in this dictionary. For rhyming slang see Chivy .)

Slap-bang, in sport, means that the gun was discharged incessantly; it went slap here and bang there. As a term of laudation it means “very dashing,” both words being playful synonyms of “dashing,” the repetition being employed to give intensity. Slap-bang, here we are again, means, we have “popped” in again without ceremony. Pop, slap, bang, and dash are interchangeable.
    Dickens uses the word to signify a low eating-house.

“They lived in the same street, walked to town every morning at the same hour, dined at the same slap- bang every day.”

Slap-dash In an off-hand manner. The allusion is to the method of colouring rooms by slapping and dashing the walls, so as to imitate paper. At one time slap-dash walls were very common.

Slap-up Prime slap-up or slap-bang up. Very exquisite or dashing. Here slap is a playful synonym of dashing, and “up” is the Latin super, as in “super-fine.” The dress of a dandy or the equipage of an exquisite is “slap-up,” “prime slap-up,” or “slap-bang-up.”

“[The] more slap-up still have the shields painted on the panels with the coronet over.”- Thackeray.