Waterbury
(ˈwɔːtəbərɪ)
The name of a town in Connecticut, U.S.A., used attrib. or absol. to designate a low-priced watch or clock of a type manufactured there.
| 1884 Official Gaz. (U.S. Patent Office) 6 May 526/1 The Waterbury Watch Company, Waterbury, Conn. Application filed July 21, 1883. ‘The words {oqq}The Waterbury{cqq}.’ 1887 Kipling Plain Tales from Hills (1888) 73 Platte,..being poor, had a Waterbury watch and a plain leather guard. 1890 B. Hall Turnover Club 16 The Reporter drew from its resting place the Waterbury chronometer. 1893 Somerville & ‘Ross’ Vine Country vi. 105 My cousin with some trouble disinterred the Waterbury. 1908 Sears, Roebuck Catal. 348/1 Our new eight-day Waterbury Clock. c 1909 D. H. Lawrence Collier's Friday Night (1934) iii. 76 He..takes a Waterbury watch with a brass chain from the wall beside the book-case. 1920 F. E. Green Hist. Eng. Agricultural Labourer 1870–1920 iv. 93 He turned up..on Sunday with a fashionable billycock, a walking stick and a Waterbury. 1939 Joyce Finnegans Wake 290 O Shee who then (4.32 m.p.,..according to all three doctors waterburies) [etc.]. 1963 C. Mackenzie My Life & Times II. 42, I kept surreptitiously looking at my ten-and-sixpenny Waterbury watch. |