> as lemmas

1546 in State Papers Henry VIII (1852) XI. 110 The other twoo be of so goodde and playne natures,..as the Kinges Highnes might be sure to carry them in his sleve.

1553 T. Wilson Arte Rhetorique (1580) 183 My maister your father, hath many a tyme and oft, wipte his nose vpon his sleeve: meanyng that his father was a Fishemonger.

1583 R. Greene Mamillia i. Ep. Ded. sig. A2 Being blamed of Pausanias, for striuing further then his sleeue would stretch.

1590 R. Harvey Plaine Percevall sig. D3^v See how they gird thee in their sleeues already.

1823 J. G. Lockhart Reginald Dalton II. iii. v. 81 Few cut the sleeve by the arm the first trial they make of it.

1860 H. Gouger Two Years' Imprisonm. Burmah 212 Our..doctor had crept up the sleeve of the Chief of the prison so far as to draw from him the gift of a bamboo.

1861 ‘G. Eliot’ Silas Marner iii. 48 I'd advise you to creep up her sleeve again.

1894 G. Du Maurier Trilby II. 158 But then there's Alice's papa—and that's another pair of sleeves, as we say in France.

1904 H. James Golden Bowl I. iii. xxiv. 395 ‘Decide to live—ah yes!—for her child.’ ‘Oh, bother her child!.. To live..for her father—which is another pair of sleeves!’

1930 D. Runyon in Sat. Evening Post 5 Apr. 72/2 These coppers..know who he is very well indeed and will take great pleasure in putting the old sleeve on him if they only have a few charges against him, which they do not.

1931 Amer. Speech 6 440 Put the sleeve on, to borrow; to make a touch from a fellow convict.

1934 H. N. Rose Thes. Slang iii. 29/1 Wait'll I put the sleeve on Joe fer some chewin'.

1937 Nature 23 Jan. 130/1 Prof. Furnas's exasperating,..naive volume is altogether another pair of sleeves.

1952 P. G. Wodehouse Barmy in Wonderland i. 13 My wardrobe perished in the holocaust, of course. When you're being given the sleeve across the windpipe by Acts of God, you don't waste time fumbling around for socks and trousers.

1960 H. Wentworth & S. B. Flexner Dict. Amer. Slang 486/1 To put the sleeve on someone, 1. To arrest someone; to identify someone to the police for arrest. 2. To stop a friend on the street in order to ask for a loan of money; to ask for a contribution or for money owed.

1972 P. G. Wodehouse Pearls, Girls, & Monty Bodkin ii. 17 Just as it looked as if all they had to do was collect the bridesmaids, order the cake and sign up the Bishop and assistant clergy, along came the sleeve across the windpipe. Her father refused to give his consent to their union.