greasern.

a1642 H. Best Farming & Memorandum Bks. (1984) 31 Wee provide usually sixe or 7 greasers and they will grease..sixe lambes a day.

1832 Examiner 168/2 The sinecure place of greaser to the King's state-carriage wheels.

1888 L. A. Smith Music of Waters 38 And who do you think was second greaser?

1889 G. Findlay Working & Managem. Eng. Railway 169 The train is accompanied by a staff of..greasers who keep a vigilant watch on each side of it.

1890 Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch 17 July The head firemen [in steamers] are called ‘greasers’, and they oil and clean the machinery.

1899 Daily News 3 Oct. 3/4 The nine men..are all said to be firemen or greasers.

1906 Daily Chron. 20 Mar. 3/6 Every A.B. signing on for a British ship must prove that he has served already at least three years as an ordinary seaman on a British vessel, and that every fireman, greaser, &c., has served two years as trimmer, &c.

1909 J. R. Ware Passing Eng. Victorian Era 147/1 Greaser (Navy, 1860–82), a scornful way of describing naval engineers.

1942 Penguin New Writing 15 9 Seamen don't salute bloody greasers.

1906 L. Claremont Gem-cutter's Craft 100 The heavy material among which are the diamonds..is..passed through a machine called the ‘greaser’, which consists of a shaking table made of five shallow steps..coated with a thick layer of grease, and the diamonds adhere to the grease while the remainder of the gravel is washed away.

1962 F. C. Phillips Smith's Gemstones (ed. 13) xx. 276 In this ingenious machine, the ‘jigger’ or ‘greaser’ as it is commonly termed, the concentrates are washed over a series of galvanized-iron trays, which are covered with a thick coat of grease.

1908 Westm. Gaz. 17 Nov. 5/2 Greasers are fitted every~where necessary.

1923 Daily Mail 11 May 12 I liked very much the accessibility of all the greasers on the car. Every one can easily be reached with a grease gun without any acrobatic feats.

1924 A. W. Judge Mod. Motor Cars I. 245 The shackle pins..should be provided either with screw-down greasers or dust-proof oil cups.

1900 J. S. Farmer Public School Word-bk. 100 Greaser,..a cad.

1911 D. Coke Wilson's vii. 74 Dick could not help wondering..what possible breach of House discipline could brand a fellow as a beastly greazer.

1958 Spectator 7 Feb. 163/1 The dismissive contempt the little greaser had so richly earned.

1959 I. Opie & P. Opie Lore & Lang. Schoolchildren x. 191 Grease is a very popular word in school just now, and seems to be short for ‘greaser’—i.e. sycophant, soft-soaper, teacher's pet.

1964 San Francisco Examiner 26 Jan. i. 14 The boy distinguished..‘the Surfers’..from less-favored individuals called ‘Greasers’, who indulge in such gauche activities as drag-racing, putting grease on their hair, smoking marijuana and dancing the Twist.

1965 Sun 8 June 7/7 You can call rockers Greasers if you like... Greasers just means they have to put a lot of work into bikes.

1969 Guardian 23 Sept. 5/1 The London Street Commune..intends forming a ‘working coalition between greasers, skinheads, and beats’.

1970 Daily Mirror 31 Mar. 24/4 200 teenagers—both skin-heads and ‘greasers’, who are long-haired youths—fought for two hours with bricks and chains.

1971 Daily Tel. 3 Sept. (Colour Suppl.) 41 The surfers used to refer to the hotrodders neither as hotrodders nor as Hair Boys, but as ‘greasers’.

1971 It 7–21 Oct. 21/3 From the very start he seemed bound for Angeldom, leading a young pack of greasers down Leyton Baths on a regular basis and battling with the Mods.