Note 34 — “OH, I’M WAT, WAT!”
Reading edition
They are strange beings, these lexicographers. Richardson, for instance, under the word SNAIL, gives this quotation from Beaumont and Fletcher’s Wit at Several Weapons,— “Oh, Master Pompey! how is ’t, man? Clown—Snails, I’m almost starved with love and cold, and one thing or other.” Any one else knows of course that it is “‘s nails”—the contraction of the old oath or interjection—God’s nails. Return