forty

forty, a. and n.
  (ˈfɔːtɪ)
  Forms: 1 féowertiᵹ, féowurtiᵹ, Northumb. feuortiᵹ, 2 Orm. fowwerrtiᵹ, feortiᵹ, 2–3 f(e)owerti, 3 feouwerti, f(e)uwerti, fuerti, feowrti, fourte, 3–4 fourti, south. vourti, -y, (3 forti), 3–8 fourty, 4 faurty, 5 fourthi, -y, 6 fourtie, -ye, fortie, 6– forty.
  [OE. féowertiᵹ = OFris. fiuwertich, OS. fiwartig, fiartig, fiortig (MDu. viertich, Du. veertig), OHG. fiorzug (MHG. vierzic, mod.Ger. vierzig), ON. fiórer tiger, fiǫrutigi, fiǫrut{iacu}u (Sw. fyratio, fyrtio, Da. fyrretyve, firti), Goth. fidwôr tigjus: see four and -ty.]
  A. adj. a. The cardinal number equal to four tens, represented by the figures 40, xl, or XL. Also in comb. with numbers below ten (cardinal and ordinal), as forty-one, forty-first, etc.

c 950 Lindisf. Gosp. Matt. iv. 2 & mið ðy ᵹefæste feuortiᵹ daᵹa & feowertiᵹ næhta. a 1175 Cott. Hom. 227 He hi afedde feortiȝ wintre. c 1200 Trin. Coll. Hom. 61 Adam was in helle in pine fuwerti hundred wintre for his sinne. 1297 R. Glouc. (1724) 419 More þan a uourty ȝer hyt was þat he was ybore. c 1386 Chaucer Can. Yeom. Prol. & T. 808 If that thee list it have, Ye shul paye fourty pound. c 1489 Caxton Sonnes of Aymon i. 55 He hadde noo moo wyth hym but fourthi. c 1585 R. Browne Answ. Cartwright 43 In the fourtie and eyght Psalme. 1698 Fryer Acc. E. India & P. 94 At the end of their Quarentine, which is Forty days. 1707 Hearne Collect. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.) I. 323 He died in the fourty fifth year of his Age. 1803 Hatchett in Phil. Trans. XCIII. 89 It..was found to contain one forty-eighth of antimony. 1825 J. Neal Bro. Jonathan II. 188 The day..according to his calculation, was about forty-eight hours. 1860 Reade Cloister & H. xxv, Dietrich's forty years weighed him down like forty bullets.

  b. Used indefinitely to express a large number. like forty (U.S. colloq.): with immense force or vigour, ‘like anything’.

1607 Shakes. Cor. iii. i. 243 On faire ground I could beat fortie of them. 1619 G. Herbert Let. 19 Jan. Wks. 1859 I. 381, I have forty businesses in my hands: your Courtesy will pardon the haste of your humblest Servant. 1692 R. L'Estrange Fables cccv, He that's Well, already, and upon a Levity of Mind, Quits his Station, in hopes to be Better, 'tis Forty to One, he loses by the Change. 1852 Mrs. Stowe Uncle Tom's C. viii, ‘I has principles and I sticks to them like forty’.

  c. † forty pence: a customary amount for a wager. forty winks (colloq.): a short nap, esp. after dinner.

1567 Harman Caveat viii. 46 Forty pence gaged vpon a matche of wrastling. 1613 Shakes. Hen. VIII, ii. iii. 89 How tastes it? is it bitter? forty pence, no. 1872 Punch 16 Nov. 208/2 If a..man, after reading steadily through the Thirty-nine Articles, were to take forty winks. 1887 Sims Mary Jane's Mem. 228 I'm tired, and I want my forty winks.

  † d. = fortieth. Obs.

1559 Homilies i. Good Wks. iii. (1859) 58 Sectes..were neither the forty part so many among the Jewes, nor [etc.].

  e. the forty hours (also qualifying devotion, etc.; It. le quarant' ore): in the R.C. Church, the continuous exposition of the Host for forty hours, used as an occasion of special devotion or intercession.

1759 A. Butler Lives Saints IV. 560 The saint..ordered the forty hours prayer for his recovery. 1839 K. H. Digby Mores Cath. IX. iii. 79 The devotion of the forty hours prayer instituted by a poor Capuchin friar, Joseph of Milan. 1869 A. T. Drane Life Mother Margaret Hallahan vii. 189 During the Octave of Corpus Christi this year the Devotion of the Forty Hours was for the first time celebrated in St. Catherine's Convent. 1922 Cath. Encycl. Suppl. 29/1 The Forty Hours' Adoration. 1967 New Cath. Encycl. V. 1036/1 Forty hours devotion. A continuous period of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, begun and terminated with a solemn high Mass, procession where possible, Litany of the Saints, and special prayers. Ibid. 1036/2 Forty Hours has come to be a devotion simply honoring the Blessed Sacrament rather than a means of making reparation or of petitioning for peace.

  B. n.
  1. a. The age of 40 years. b. the forties: the years between 40 and 50 of a century or of one's life.

1732 Berkeley Alciphr. i. §1 Alciphron is above forty. 1885 Athenæum 18 July 83/1 His magnum opus was published in Edinburgh some time in the forties. 1893 G. Hill Hist. Eng. Dress II. 243 What were called half-caps were worn in the early forties.

  2. the forty: a designation applied to certain public bodies in various countries and at various periods, from the number of their members; e.g. to several courts of justice in the Venetian republic; to a body of itinerant justices in ancient Attica, empowered to try petty actions; to the French Academy, and (occasionally) to the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

1820 Byron Mar. Fal. i. i. 24 'Tis not for us To anticipate the sentence of the Forty.

  3. A yacht of forty tons burden.

1894 Field 9 June 836/1 The two big cutters had left..the two forties many miles astern.

  4. the roaring forties: see roaring forties as main entry.
  5. One fourth of a quarter section of land, comprising forty acres. U.S.

1845 C. M. Kirkland Western Clearings 2 Eighties and forties..are plain enough when one is habituated to them. 1873 E. Eggleston Myst. Metrop. i. 19 It was just so many quarter sections, ‘eighties’, and ‘forties’ to be bought low. 1902 S. E. White Blazed Trail i. 13 The men who were to fell the trees, Radway distributed along one boundary of a ‘forty’. 1913 G. S. Porter Laddie (1917) xiv. 276, I had thought we would commence on the east forty when planning the work [of ploughing]. 1947 Pacific Discovery Jan.–Feb. 5/1 This was wilderness, as distinct from the back forty.

  6. A period of forty minutes' play.

1913 Field 25 Oct. 904/2 Light forwards are bound to be worn down in two ‘forties’ by heavier.

  7. A ‘crook’, thief, sharper (in quot. 1879, a convict). Austral. slang.

1879 Mrs. C. Cook Comic Hist. N.S.W., Fifteen of the ‘Forties’ became free of the colony this June. 1882 Sydney Slang Dict. 8/2 The Forties, the worst types of ‘the talent’ who get up rows in a mob,..and sometimes assault and rob, either in barrooms or the streets. 1885 Australasian Printers' Keepsake 116 Ah, them were jolly days indeed, Long ere the Vandemonian swarm had come,..Or ere the ‘Forty’ had capsized our trade. 1927 M. M. Bennett Christison xxii. 194 Their numbers swelled with rowdies and ‘forties’—gambling sharpers who travelled from shed to shed making five pounds by cheating for every five shillings they earned.

  C. in Combination.
  1. Combination of the simple numeral with a n. (used attrib. or ellipt. as ns.), and parasynthetic derivatives of these: forty-acre U.S. and N.Z., a section of land comprising forty acres (cf. B. 5); forty-foot, † (a) = forty legs; (b) see quot. 1889; forty-footer, a forty-foot yacht; forty-knot, ‘the Alternanthera Achyrantha, a prostrate amarantaceous weed of warm countries’ (Cent. Dict.); forty legs, a popular or dialectal name of the centipede; † forty pence, ? a jocular designation for a servant who runs errands; forty-penny nail, a nail of such size that one thousand of them weigh forty pounds (see penny); † forty penny piece, a coin worth 40 pence Scots, i.e. 3½d. sterling; forty rod lightning, U.S. slang: see quot.; forty-rod whisky = prec.; also ellipt.; forty skewer: see Fortescue; forty-spot, the Tasmanian name for a bird, Pardalotus quadragintus (Gould, Birds Austr., 1848); forty-tonner = B. 3.

1742 New Hampshire Probate Records III. 94, I give to my Grand Son..one *Forty Acre Lot. 1860 in A. F. Ridgway Voices from Auckland 48 The Forty-acre men will ruin the country. 1869 J. May Guide to Farming in N.Z. 42 We were lately on the sections of two ‘forty-acre men’. 1877 C. B. George 40 Yrs. on Rail xi. 227, ‘I live just over there’, pointing to his house across a forty-acre lot. 1943 C. Crow Gt. Amer. Customer 185 There was no reason why a farmer could not plant a whole forty-acre field in wheat.

1673 E. Brown Trav. Europe (1677) 17 An Indian Scolopendria, or *Forty-foot. 1889 N. W. Linc. Gloss., Forty-foot, a right of forty-foot which the tenants of certain manors had over the soil of an adjoining manor.

1902 Essex Inst. Hist. Coll. XXXVIII. 256 The schooner-yacht ‘Excelsior’ was one of the earliest of the ‘*forty-footers’.

1697 W. Dampier Voy. I. xi. 320 Centapees, call'd by the English *40 Legs. 1750 G. Hughes Barbadoes 89 The Forty-legs in Surinam are a great deal larger than what are bred in Barbados. 1866 J. E. Brogden Provinc. Words Lincolnsh., Forty-legs, a centipede.

1616 Englishm. for my Money F iiij a, Farewell *fortipence, goe seeke your Signor.

1769 in Hawkesworth Voy. (1773) II. 182 No nails less than *fortypenny were current. c 1850 Rudim. Navig. (Weale) 135 Nails of sorts are, 4, 6, 8..and 40-penny nails.

1681 S. Colvil Whigs Supplic. (1751) 58 Butter and cheese, and wool fleeces, For groats and *Fourty penny pieces.

1889 Farmer Americanisms, *Forty Rod Lightning, whisky of the most villainous description, so called because humorously warranted to kill at forty rods.

1892 Stevenson Wrecker 124 *Forty-rod whisky was administered by a proprietor as dirty as his beasts.

1863 W. H. Russell My Diary North & South II. 11 Their cries for water were incessant to allay the internal fires caused by ‘40 rod’ and ‘60 rod’. 1869 ‘Mark Twain’ Sks. New & Old (1875) 70 Trading for forty-rod whiskey..has played the everlasting mischief. 1873 J. H. Beadle Undevel. West xiii, The standard drink is whisky—‘stone fence’, ‘forty-rod’, and ‘tarantula-juice’. 1916 ‘Anzac’ On Anzac Trail v. 77 Shebangs [in Cairo] where they sell you whisky that takes the lining of your throat down with it..a soothing liquid that licks ‘forty-rod’, ‘chained lightning’, or ‘Cape smoke’ to the back of creation. 1919 Forty-rod [see boot-legging]. 1948 Daily Oklahoman (Okla. City) 7 June 8/1 The mere possession of a few gills of forty rod is not counted as an ample offset to planned assassination.

1895 Daily News 11 June 2/4 For the second match, *forty-tonners, three entered.

  2. a. Substantival uses of the compound numerals (see A. 1): forty-eight, (a) a flowerpot of the third smallest size, of which there are 48 in a ‘cast’; (b) pl. a sheet of a book folded into forty-eight leaves; (c) the forty-eight preludes and fugues of J. S. Bach; forty-eightmo, the size of a book in forty-eights; forty-four, (a) a forty-four gun ship; (b) a bicycle with a wheel 44 inches in diameter; † forty-nine, a 17th c. name for some kind of liquor; forty-one Hist., the Venetian council by whom the Doge was elected; forty-two attrib. in forty-two man, a man of the 42nd regiment.

1851 Glenny Handbk. Fl. Gard. 227 They must be potted off into moderately small pots, say *forty-eights. 1808 C. Stower Printers' Gram. 192 A Half Sheet of Forty-eights, with Two Signatures. 1839 T. C. Hansard Print. & Type-Founding 168 Forty-eights to be paid 2s. per sheet extra. 1873 H. C. Banister Music (1889) iii. xxvi. 206 Bach's Fugue in C{sharp} Minor, No. 4 of the 48. 1902 Westm. Gaz. 29 Dec. 1/3 Those famous fugues and preludes known to all musicians as the ‘Forty-Eight’. 1965 G. Hughes Handbk. Gt. Composers vii. 45 At times the..counterpoint seems to spring from the interweaving of rhythmic figures rather than of melodic phrases—as in the prelude in F sharp major from the second book of the ‘forty-eight’.

1888 C. T. Jacobi Printers' Vocab., *Forty-eightmo, a sheet of paper folded into forty-eight leaves.

1821 Byron To Murray 7 Feb., The giant element..made our stout *forty-four's..timbers creak again. 1884 Century Mag. Nov. 55/2 His hand resting..on the handle of his forty-four.

1692 A. P[itcairne] Babell 2 (Maitl. 1830) 5 Assist me all, ye Muses nyne! With a beer glass of *fourtie nyne. 1723 W. Meston Knight (1767) 21 A glass or two of forty-nine He can pull off before he dine.

1612 W. Shute tr. Fougasses' Venice ii. 481 The *forty one being assembled..they..chose him Prince.

1816 Scott Antiq. xliii, Here comes an old *forty-two man, who is a fitter match for you than I am.

  b. In abbreviated dates, as forty-one, -two, -three, etc., colloquially used to designate a year of the current or preceding century. Hence forty-niner U.S., one of those who settled in California during the ‘gold fever’ about 1849.

1710 H. Bedford Vind. Ch. Eng. 1 The Spirit of Forty-one is reviving. 1853 Mt. Echo (Downieville, Calif.) 12 Feb. 1/1 Speeches were made by some of the worthy old forty-nin-ers. 1887 Council Bluffs Herald (Iowa U.S.) 17 Jan., Running the ‘pony express’ in the exciting days of the ‘49-ers’. 1890 Boldrewood Miner's Right xliv. 384 All old prospectors and ‘forty-niners’.

Oxford English Dictionary