▪ I. lingo1
(ˈlɪŋgəʊ)
Also 8–9 linguo.
[? corrupt form of lingua (franca): see lingua 2, 2 b, and cf. Pg. lingoa.]
A contemptuous designation for: Foreign speech or language; language which is strange or unintelligible to the person who so designates it; language peculiar to some special subject, or employed (whether properly or affectedly) by some particular class of persons.
| 1660 New Haven Col. Rec. (1858) II. 337 To w{supc}{suph} the plant [= plaintiff] answered, that he was not acquainted with Dutch lingo. 1700 Congreve Way of World iv. iv, Well, Well, I shall understand your Lingo one of these days, Cozen; in the mean while I must answer in plain English. 1702 C. Mather Magn. Chr. iii. 193 They are Sesquipedalia Verba of which their [sc. the American Indians'] Linguo is composed. 1749 Fielding Tom Jones vi. ii, I have often warned you not to talk the court gibberish to me. I tell you, I don't understand the lingo. 1758 J. Chubbe Misc. Tracts (1770) I. 84 When men speak French, or any Outlandish Linguo. 1778 Sheridan Camp ii. ii, You may swear he is a foreigner by his lingo. 1818 Blackw. Mag. III. 407 The linguo of the Virtuoso clan. 1861 Geo. Eliot in Cross Life (1885) II. 312 The good man..began to pray in a borrowed, washy lingo. 1864 Kingsley Let. to his Wife in Life (1879) II. 168 The Basques speak a lingo utterly different from all European languages. 1866 Lowell Biglow P. Introd. Poems 1890 II. 165, I should be half inclined to name the Yankee a lingo rather than a dialect. 1875 Jowett Plato (ed. 2) II. 470 They come with their barbarous lingo to flatter us. 1875 E. C. Stedman Victorian Poets 187 To use the lingo of the phrenologists, his locality is better than his individuality. |
▪ II. lingo2 Weaving.
Also 8 lingoe.
[? variant of lingot.]
(See quots.)
| 1731 Mortimer in Phil. Trans. XXXVII. 106 Every Thread of the Warp goes through a small Brass Ring called a Male, or through a Loop in the Leish, and hath a small long Weight or Lingoe hung below, to counter-balance the Packthreads. 1799 G. Smith Laboratory II. 49. 1831 G. R. Porter Silk Manuf. 254 The cords whereby the leaden weights, which are called lingos, are attached to the harness. 1880 Antrim & Down Gloss., Lingo, a long, thin weight of wire used in Jacquard looms. |
▪ III. ‖ lingo3, lingoa
[Moluccan lenggoa, dial. var. of Malay līgūh (Le Clercq Ternate Vocab. 1890). The word appears as linggoa-boom (Du. boom = tree) in Valentyn Oost-Indien (1726) III. i. 215.]
A large leguminous tree, Pterocarpus indicus, or its wood (native in the East Indies), also called Burmese rosewood, Amboyna wood, Kyabuka, etc.
| 1800 Asiatic Ann. Reg., Misc. Tracts 74 note, Of the Lingoa-wood Valentyn describes three sorts, the red, the white, and the stone-hard lingoa. 1808 tr. Stavorinus in Pinkerton Voy. & Trav. XI. 254 The wood which is called Amboyna wood, or properly Lingoa Wood. 1890 Century Dict., Lingo. |