mossybackn.

1853 Western Lit. Messenger Mar. 35/1 The patriarch of the salmon trout, the old ‘mossy back’, the largest and cunningest trout in all the lake.

1872 M. S. De Vere Americanisms 87 In the State of New York the same fish [sc. the Menhaden] appear under the name of Mossy Back or Mossbunkers.

1865 Davenport (Iowa) Daily Gaz. 5 Sept. 2/3 People hoot and wink on the streets, and say, ‘there goes mossy-back from Jones [County]’.

1866 Spectator 10 Mar. 267/1 A ‘mossy-back’ we suppose to be a politician whose mind is covered with the creeping growths of the old ideas.

1867 F. Moore Anecdotes, Poetry, & Incidents of War 351/2 I am a mossy-back, sir, and I stand here to represent the county of Jones.

1936 V. McHugh Caleb Catlum's Amer. x. 72 ‘You young upstart Whiggish dogs!’ he croaks...‘Don't get in a stew, Old Mossyback,’ I says. ‘Keep your pants on.’

1998 Guardian 30 Sept. 30 Why not a women-only [bar] too? If we have a bar for codgers, old buzzards and mossybacks we should also have one for boilers, biddies and battleaxes.

1868 Notes & Queries 30 May 507/2 The unhappy state of affairs in our Southern States has added two words to the English language—Mossyback and Carpetbagger. A Mossyback is a man who secreted himself in the woods or swamps to escape the conscription for the Southern army, where he is said to have remained hidden until the moss grew on his back.

1872 M. S. De Vere Americanisms 283 The Mossyback..was the man of the South, who secreted himself in a remote forest, or an inaccessible swamp, in order to escape conscription. His name was derived from the quaint fancy that he was determined to keep in hiding till ‘the moss should grow on his back.