Chapter What we Gave we Have, What we Spent we Had, What we Had we Lost to Whistle of W by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Duke Hamilton's defeat, the ministers animated their people to rise and march to Edinburgh; and they came up, marching on the head of their parishes, with an unheard-of fury, praying and preaching all the way as they came. The Marquis of Argyle and his party came and headed them, they being about 6,000. This was called the “Whiggamors' Inroad”; and ever after that, all who opposed the court came in contempt to be called whigs. From Scotland the word was brought into England. where it is now one of our unhappy terms of disunion.”- Bishop Burnet: Own Times.

Whiggism The political tenets of the Whigs, which may be broadly stated to be political and religious liberty. Certainly Bishop Burnet's assertion that they are “opposed to the court” may or may not be true. In the reigns of Charles II. and his brother James, no doubt they were opposed to the court, but it was far otherwise in the reign of William III., George I., etc., when the Tories were the anti-court party.

Whip (A), in the Legislative Assemblies, is a person employed to whip up members on either side. The Whips give notice to members that a motion is expected when their individual vote may be desirable. The circular runs: “A motion is expected when your vote is `earnestly' required.” If the word “earnestly” has only one red-ink dash under it the receiver is expected to come, if it has two dashes it means that he ought to come, if it has three dashes it means that he must come, if four dashes it means “stay away at your peril.” These notices are technically called “RED WHIPS.” (Annual Register, 1877, p. 86.)
   A whip. A notice sent to a member of Parliament by a “whip” (see above) to be in his place at the time stated when a “division” is expected.

Whip He whipped round the corner - ran round it quickly. (Dutch, wippen; Welsh, chwipwio, to whip; chwip, a flick or flirt.)
   He whipped it up in a minute. The allusion is to the hoisting machine called a whip. A single whip is a rope passing over one pulley; a double whip is a rope passed over two single pulleys attached to a yard-arm.

Whip-dog Day October 18 (St. Luke's Day). Brand tells us that a priest about to celebrate mass on St. Luke's Day, happened to drop the pyx, which was snatched up by a dog, and this was the origin of Whip-dog Day. (Popular Antiquities, ii. 273.)

Whip with Six Strings (The). Called “the Bloody Statute.” The religious code of six articles enacted by Convocation and Parliament in the reign of Henry VIII. (1539).

Whipping Boy A boy kept to be whipped when a prince deserved chastisement. Mungo Murray stood for Charles I., Barnaby Fitzpatrick for Edward VI. (Fuller: Church History, ii. 342.) D'Ossat and Du Perron, afterwards cardinals, were whipped by Clement VIII. for Henri IV. of France. Also called a whip-boy.

Whiskers A security for money. John de Castro of Portugal, having captured the castle of Diu, in India, borrowed of the inhabitants of Goa 1,000 pistoles for the maintenance of his fleet, and gave one of his whiskers as security of payment, saying, “All the gold in the world cannot equal the value of this natural ornament, which I deposit in your hands.”

Whisky Contracted from the Gaelic ooshk-'a-pai (water of health). Usquebaugh, Irish uisge-'a-bagh (water of life); cau de vie, French (water of life).
   L.L. whisky. (See L.L. Whisky.)
   Whisky, drink divine (the song) was by O'Leary, not by John Sheehan.
    As a pretty general rule the Scotch word is whiskey, and the Irish word whisky, without the e.

Whisky-drinker The Irish whisky-drinker. John [Jack] Sheehan, author of The Irish Whisky-drinker's Papers in Bentley's Miscellany.

Whist Cotton says that “the game is so called from the silence that is to be observed in the play.” Dr. Johnson has adopted this derivation; but Taylor the Water-poet (1650), Swift (1728), and Barrington (1787) called the game Whisk, to the great discomfiture of this etymology. Pope (1715) called it whist.
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