saw gourds

present singular third person saws gourds · participle present sawing gourds · past sawed gourds · participle past sawed gourds · participle past sawn gourds

1. intransitivechiefly late-19th-century US slangTo snore very loudly.

   The fuse burnt down to the skin and went out, but Cudjo still continued to saw gourds, apparently in no wise incommoded by the burning of the fuse.

   1892, John Crittenden Duval, chapter XI, Early Times in Texas II: The Young Explorers, page 154, § 8

   3 more examples

   I thought of these things with a tendency to philosophize, but Zeno himself would have gone to sleep after such a day as I had spent. In five minutes, thoughtless and philosophers, we were all “sawing gourds” together in the land of Nod.

   1870, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, chapter II, in The Heart of the Continent, page 91

   He set by the fire a chawin his tobacco and swapped lies with us untill bed time, and we put him in the surplus room and he sawed gourds so, it was after midnight before we got to sleep.

   1873, Bill Arp’s Peace Papers, paper xxxiii, page 216

   When a farmer gits a good run of stock and various and sundry crops growin around him, with the natural increase in full swing, he is in the middle of the big road that leads right on to the land of peace and plenty and love and liberty. When the day’s work is done, and the gold of evenin meets the dusk of night, he can draw his bobtail night shirt about him and tumble down to pleasant dreams, knowin that while he sleeps and dreams and saws gourds his worldly possessions are growin and stackin up all the time.

   ante 1897, Francis Bartow Lloyd; Lily C. Lloyd, editor, chapter XXX, Sketches of Country Life, page 188