citizens to meet at the City Hall.' The bell notifies us of the time of meeting.'

The first of these senses, as Dr. Witherspoon long ago observed (Druid, No. 5), is the only one in which this word is employed by English writers. They use it simply in the 'sense of the Latin notificare, i. e. 'to make known,' as in the following examples from Richardson:

His [Duke Robert's] worthie acts valientlie and fortunately atchieved against the infidels, are notified to the world by many and sundrie writers.— Holinshed.

Such protest must also be notified, within fourteen days after, to the drawer.-Blackstone, Com.

The two significations, Nos. 2 and 3, in which the direct object of the verb is the person instead of the thing, is in accordance with the French use of the verb notifier. It is not improbable that they will yet be adopted in England; for the same transfer of the idea from the thing to the person took place in the Latin language itself, in which the word notus, known, was also used in the sense of informed of, knowing. NOTHING TO NOBODY. Nobody's business. This singular expression is common in the language of the illiterate in some parts of the South.

But surely no lady drank punch? Yes, three of them did, . . . and the way these women love punch is nothing to nobody.—Georgia Scenes. NOTION. Inclination; in vulgar use; as, 'I have a notion to do that.'-Webster.

NOTIONS. Small wares or trifles.-Worcester. A word much used by the ingenious New Englanders.

"Can I suit you to-day, ma'am?" said a pedlar from New England, when offering his wares for sale in Michigan. "I've all sorts of notions. Here's fashionable calicoes; French work collars and capes; elegant milk pans, and Harrison skimmers, and ne plus ultry dippers! patent pills-cure anything you like; ague bitters; Shaker yarbs; essences, wintergreen, lobely; tapes, pins, needles, hooks and eyes; broaches and bracelets; smelling bottles; castor ile; corn-plaster; mustard; garding seeds; silver spoons; pocket combs ; tea-pots; green tea; saleratus; tracts; song-books; thimbles; baby's whistles; slates; playin' cards; puddin' sticks; baskets; wooden bowls; powder and shot. I shan't offer you lucifers, for ladies with such eyes never buys matches—but you can't ask me for anything I haven't got, I guess.”—Mrs. Clavers's Forest Life, Vol. II. p. 113.

NUBBINS. Imperfectly formed ears of corn.

NURLY. A corrupt pronunciation of gnarly, i. e. gnarled.

Times are mopish and nurly.-Margaret, p. 314.

TO NULLIFY. (Lat. nullus.) To annul; to make void.Todd's Johnson.

You will say, that this nullifies all exhortations to piety; since a man, in this case, cannot totally come up to the thing he is exhorted to.-South's Sermons.

NULLIFICATION.

The act of nullifying; a rendering void and of no effect, or of no legal effect.-Webster. The political meaning of nullification is limited and special-at least in American politics. Some years ago, when the system of high protective duties on foreign imports was predominant in the national councils, the politicians of South Carolinawhose main article of export is cotton-were strongly desirous of free trade with England and France, the principal consumers of that article, believing that the consumption of it in those countries would be augmented by an augmentation of the import of their fabrics. Those politicians thought themselves aggrieved therefore by the protection given in the United States to the manufacture of fabrics coming into compe- ' tition with those of England and France. But finding Congress resolute in adhering to the protective tariff, the South Carolina politicians became so exasperated that at last they proclaimed their intention to nullify the tariff—that is, to admit British and French goods into their ports free of duty, and not to permit the exercise of Custom House functions in their State. In other words, nullification, in the case of South Carolina, was simply an act, or at least a threat, of open rebellion. [John Inman.]

Somebody must go ahead, and look after these matters to keep down nullification and take care of the Gineral [Jackson] when he gits into his tantrums, and keep the great democratic party from splitting in two.Crockett, Tour, p. 218.

NULLIFIER. One who believes in or maintains the right of a State to refuse compliance with a law enacted by the legislature of the whole Union. [John Inman.]

0.

OATS. To feel one's oats, is to feel one's importance.

You know you feel your oats as well as any one. So don't be so infarnal mealy-mouthed, with your mock-modesty face.-S. Slick in England. OBLIGEMENT. This antiquated word is still used by old people in New England.-Pickering.

OCELOT. The French popular name of a digitigrade carnivorous mammal of the cat kind.-Webster.

ODD FISH. A person who is eccentric or odd in his manners. The Knickerbocker Magazine, in a sketch of a learned professor of Tinnecum, says:

He was styled unanimously an odd fish, by those who knew him ; nor did his appearance belie him, as he started forth on a geological excursion, making poems and tuning pianos by the way. On another occasion he won a foot race on the Union course for a hundred dollars, to enable him to pursue his studies for the ministry.-Vol. VI. p. 551.

ODD STICK. An eccentric person; as, 'John Randolph was an odd stick.'

OF. An action of the organs of sense may be either involuntary or voluntary. Accordingly we say to hear, to see, to denote an involuntary act; and to look at, to hearken or to listen to, to denote a voluntary one. With regard to the other senses we are not so well provided with words; but some people, prompted apparently by a feeling of this deficiency, endeavor to supply it by construing the verbs to feel, to taste, to smell, with the preposition of, to signify a voluntary act. Hence, to feel, taste, smell of a thing, is to do so intentionally. This corruption is rarely met with in writing.

In the course of the forenoon, a few women came around our tent-felt of it-and peeped through the cracks, to see Mrs. Perkins.-Perkins's Residence in Persia, p. 103.

OFF AND ON. Vacillating, changeable, undecided; in which sense it is much used with us. In England it is also used.Carr's Craven Dialect.

Be it so, that the Corinthians had no such contentions among them, as

Paul wrote of; be it so, that they had not mis-ordered themselves, it was neither off-nor-on, to that that Paul said.—Latimer, Sermons, Vol. I. p. 176. OFFISH. A word applied to a person who is distant or unapproachable in his manners.

OFFSET. In accounts, a sum, account, or value set off against another sum or account, as an equivalent.-Webster.

This word is generally used in place of the English term set-off. Mr. Pickering says, "it is also very common in popular language, in the sense of an equivalent." None of the English dictionaries have the word in any sense except that of "shoot from a plant."

He avoided giving offence to any of the numerous offsets of Presbyterianism.-Lond. Quart. Rev., Vol. X. p. 498.

The expense of the frigates had been strongly urged; but the saving in insurance, in ships and cargoes, and the ransom of seamen, was more than an offset against this item.-Marshall's Washington.

Thanksgiving was an anti-Christmas festival, established as a kind of off-set to that.-Margaret, p. 61.

TO OFFSET. To set one account against another; to make the account of one party pay the demand of another.Webster.

OLD. Crafty; cunning. Used in vulgar language.-Webster. When a person attempts to get the advantage of another, and is frustrated in the attempt by the sagacity or shrewdness of the other, the latter will say, 'I'm a little too old for you,' meaning that he is too cunning to be deceived by him.

OLD, for stale; in this expression, 'old bread.'

land.-Pickering's Vocab.

New Eng

Mr. P. infers from the following extract, that this is also a Scotticism:

The Scotticism old bread, seems no way inferior to the Anglicism stale bread.-Lond. Monthly Mag., April, 1800.

OLD COUNTRY. A term applied to Great Britain, originally by natives from that country, but now understood and used generally in the United States.

OLD COUNTRYMAN. A native of England, Scotland, Ireland, or Wales. The term is never applied to persons from the Continent of Europe.

OLD-WIFE, or OLD-SQUAW. The popular name of a brown duck, one of the most common throughout North America, the long-tailed Duck of Pennant.-Nat. Hist. of New York. OLD-MAN. (Artemisia abrotanum.) A popular name for the Southern-wood plant.

OLDERMOST. Oldest. Used at the West.

Ain't that oldermost stranger a kinder sort a preacher ?-Carlton, The New Purchase, Vol. II. p. 70.

OLYCOKE. (Dutch, olikoek, oil-cake.) A cake fried in lard. A favorite delicacy with the Dutch, and also with their descendants, in New York. There are various kinds, as dough-nuts, crullers, etc.

ONCE IN A WHILE. Occasionally; sometimes.

Scarcely a day passes in which from two to half a dozen of our paragraphs are not "appropriated" by others of the city papers, without any allusion to their origin, or any complaint from us. But once in a while, when the "appropriation" is of a column or more, we bear the act in mind and take the first convenient occasion to retaliate.-N. Y. Com. Adv.

ON HAND. At hand; present. A colloquial expression in frequent use.

The Anti-Sabbath meeting, so long talked of, has at length taken place in Boston. About 300 females were on hand.-N. Y. Express.

If our numerous subscribers and the public will be on hand about 5 o'clock this evening, we can give them the European papers by the America, containing doubtless the most critical intelligence ever transmitted to this country. So be ready.-Burgess, Stringer & Co., 222 Broadway. ONPLUSH, for nonplus. The expression is used in the Southern States.

You know I tuck dinner at the Planters. Well, I was put a leetle to the onplush by that old nigger feller what waits on the table there. I did not know what to make of him.-Maj. Jones's Courtship, p. 63.

ONTO. A preposition used in some of the Northern States, but not peculiar to America.

When the stack rises two feet high to be conveniently forked onto from the ground.-Marshall, Rural Econ., Yorkshire, Vol. II. p. 144.

Mr. Pickering quotes the following as the only example he has seen in an American book:

Take all your cigars and tobacco, and in some calm evening carry them onto the common.-Dr. B. Waterhouse, Lecture on Tobacco.