pickle-herring

plural pickle-herrings

1. countableobsoleteuncountableherring preserved in brine; pickled herring.

   'Tis a Gentleman heere. A plague o'these pickle herring: How now Sot.

   c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]

   1 more example

   How three single halfepence; life, this will scarce serue a man in sauce, a halporth of mustard, a halporth of oyle, and a halporth of viniger, whats left then for the pickle herring

   1611, Thomas Middleton, The Roaring Girle

2. countableobsoleteuncountableA buffoon.

   hee had fed to his dying day on fat Capons, burnt sack and Suger, and not so desperately have ventur'de his life, and shortend his dayes by keeping company with pickle herrings

   1606, Thomas Dekker, News from Hell

   2 more examples

   The first who made the experiment was a merry-andrew, who was put into my hands by a neighbouring justice of peace, in order to reclaim him from that profligate kind of life. Poor Pickle-herring had not taken above one turn in it, when he came out of the cave, like a hermit from his cell, with a penitential look and a most rueful countenance.

   1714 September 24 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison], “MONDAY, September 14, 1714”, in The Spectator, number 599; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume VI, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC

   How different faces are in this particular! Some of them speak not. They are books in which not a line is written, save perhaps a date. Others are great Family Bibles, with both the Old and the New Testament written in them. Others are Mother Goose and nursery tales; others, bad tragedies, or pickle-herring farces; and others, like that of the landlady’s daughter at the Star, sweet love-anthologies, and songs of the affections.

   1839, [Henry Wadsworth Longfellow], Hyperion, a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), New York, N.Y.: Samuel Colman […], →OCLC