![]() Redford, by the time she was raised, altered, and beautified, for, like the Highlandman’s gun, she wants stock, lock, and barrel, to put her into repair.įrom Memoirs of the life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., by J. ![]() I do not believe I should save £100 by retaining Mrs. So that the tonnage of the state of Massachusetts alone, exceeds that of the whole of the southern states put together, “stock, lock and barrel,” 118,708, tons and 68 ninety-fifths.Ībout the phrase as it appeared in the letter written by Walter Scott on 29 th October 1817, the persons who quote it do not contextualise it, so that it is incomprehensible writing to the English actor and playwright Daniel Terry (circa 1780-1829) from-and about-Abbotsford, the new house that he was building near Melrose, in the Scottish Borders, Scott specified that he did not plan to keep the original farmhouse, which he called Mrs. The whole of the southern states, including the city of Baltimore, own 344,336 tons and 15 ninety-fifths. Gallatin’s last report, amounted to 1,350,281 tons and 41 ninety-fifths, of which rather more than one third or 463,044 tons and 83 ninety-fifths, belong to the state of Massachusetts. But I have found an earlier instance in the New York Evening Post (New York, N.Y.) of 18 th February 1811-the fact that the phrase is in quotation marks seems to indicate that it was regarded as slang:įacts-stubborn facts-The whole tonnage of the United States, according to Mr. It is always said that the phrase itself, which first appeared as stock, lock and barrel, was first used by the Scottish poet and novelist Walter Scott (1771-1832) in a letter that he wrote on 29 th October 1817-because it is the earliest instance recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary (3 rd edition, 2015). But oh! Mars and Bellona, and all ye other powers of war, both great and small, what a turning out was here!-Here came men without officers, and officers without men-long fowling pieces and short blunderbusses-muskets of all sorts and sizes, some without bayonets, others without locks, others without stocks, and many without lock, stock, or barrel. On 24 th September 1810, The Washingtonian (Windsor, Vermont) published the fifth chapter of Book 5 of A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker, by the American author Washington Irving (1783-1859), which contains this paragraph:Īs, however, the present emergency was pressing, he was obliged to avail himself of such means of defence as were next at hand, and accordingly appointed a general inspection and parade of the train bands. It is often said that this collocation first appeared in figurative contexts, but this is not true. It is curious that the use of lock, stock and barrel in collocation is first recorded in the early 19 th century only, although firearms of this type had been in use for several centuries. ![]() It is based on the three principal components that make up a flintlock gun: lock denotes the firing mechanism, stock the handle or wooden shoulder-piece to which it is attached, and barrel the tube down which the bullet is fired. The phrase lock, stock and barrel means completely, entirely.
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