Chapter Sleave to Slubber-Degullion of S by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Sleave to Slubber-Degullion

Sleave The ravelled sleave of care (Shakespeare: Macbeth). The sleave is the knotted or entangled part of thread or silk, the raw edge of woven articles. Chaucer has “sleeveless words” (words like ravellings, not knit together to any wise purpose); Bishop Hall has `sleaveless rhymes” (random rhymes); Milton speaks of “sleeveless reason” (reasoning which proves nothing); Taylor the water-poet has “sleeveless message” (a simple message; it now means a profitless one). The weaver's slaie is still used. (Saxon, slae, a weaver's reed; Danish, slojfe, a knot.)

“If all these faile, a beggar-woman may
A sweet love-letter to her hands convay,
Or a neat laundresse or a hearb-wife can
Carry a sleevelesse message now and than.”
Taylor's Workes, ii. III (1630).

Sleck-stone The ebon stone used by goldsmiths to slecken (polish) their gold with. Curriers use a similar stone for smoothing out creases of leather; the slecker is also made of glass, steel, etc. (Icelandic, slikr, our word sleek.)

Sledge-hammer A sledge-hammer argument. A clincher; an argument which annihilates opposition at a blow. The sledge-hammer is the largest sort of hammer used by smiths, and is wielded by both hands. The word sledge is the Saxon slecge (a sledge).

Sleep (Anglo-Saxon slaepen). Crabbe's etymology of doze under this word is exquisite:-

“Doze, a variation from the French dors and the Latin dormio (to sleep), which was anciently dermio and comes from the Greek derma (a skin), because people lay on skins when they slept ”!- Synonyms.

   To sleep away. To pass away in sleep, to consume in sleeping; as, to sleep one's life away.
   To sleep off. To get rid of by sleep.

Sleep like a Top When peg-tops and humming-tops are at the acme of their gyration they become so steady and quiet that they do not seem to move. In this state they are said to sleep. Soon they begin to totter, and the tipsy movement increases till they fall. The French say, Dormir comme un sabot, and Mon sabot dort. (See Similes .)

Sleeper (The). Epimenides, the Greek poet, is said to have fallen asleep in a cave when a boy, and not to have waked for fifty-seven years, when he found himself possessed of all wisdom. Rip Van Winkle, in Washington Irving's tale, is supposed to sleep for twenty years, and wake up an old man, unknowing and unknown. (See Klaus .)
   Sleepers. Timbers laid asleep or resting on something, as the sleepers of a railway. (Anglo-Saxon, slaepere.)
   The Seven Sleepers. (See Seven.)

Sleeping Beauty From the French La Belle au Bois Dormante, by Charles Perrault (Contes du Temps). She is shut up by enchantment in a castle, where she sleeps a hundred years, during which time an impenetrable wood springs up around. Ultimately she is disenchanted by a young prince, who marries her. Epimenides, the Cretan poet, went to fetch a sheep, and after sleeping fifty-seven years continued his search, and was surprised to find when he got home that his younger brother was grown grey. (See Rip Van Winkle .)

Sleepless Hat (A). A worthless, worn-out hat, which has no nap.

Sleepy Hollow The name given, in Washington Irving's Sketch Book, to a quiet old-world village on the Hudson.

Sleeve To hang on one's sleeve. To listen devoutly to what one says; to surrender your freedom of thought and action to the judgment of another. The allusion is to children hanging on their mother's sleeve.
   To have in one's sleeve is to offer a person's name for a vacant situation. Dean Swift, when he waited on Harley, had always some name in his sleeve. The phrase arose from the custom of placing pockets in sleeves. These sleeve-pockets were chiefly used for memoranda, and other small articles.
   To laugh in one's sleeve. To ridicule a person not openly but in secret; to conceal a laugh by hiding your face in the large sleeves at one time worn by men. Rire sous cape.
   To pin to one's sleeve, as, “I shan't