ˈsit-fast, sitfast, n. and a.
Also 7 sitt-.
[f. sit v. + fast adv.]
A. n.
1. Farriery. A hard excrescence, induration, or tumour, tending to ulceration, produced on the back of a horse by the uneven pressure or chafing of the saddle.
| 1611 Cotgr., Mal de corne, the sitt-fast; a hornie swelling on the backe of a horse. 1639 T. de Grey Expert Farrier 317 An hard knob..formerly a saddle-gald..is converted into a sit-fast. 1708 Lond. Gaz. No. 4493/3 A white Gelding full aged,..a Sit-fast lately taken out about the middle of the Saddle-place. 1753 Bartlet Gentl. Farriery (1754) 285 A sit-fast proceeds generally from a warble. 1831 Youatt Horse 169 Warbles..will frequently disappear without medical treatment, but they will, at other times, degenerate into sitfasts. 1887 Sat. Rev. 19 Nov. 707/2 Whether a warbly back or even a sitfast would be such unsoundness as to constitute breach of warranty. |
| fig. 1661 Hickeringill Jamaica 11 Arguments..sufficiently confirm'd by every Marriner, to take of [= off] the greatest sit-fast of incredulity. a 1732 Boston Crook in Lot (1805) 53 He can raise the oldest sit-fast, concerning which there remains no hope with us. |
b. dial. (See quots.)
| 1828 Carr Craven Gloss., Sit-fast, a false healing of a wound, whereby is made a hard scab or excrescence. 1888 Abdy Sheffield Gloss. s.v., He's got a sit-fast in his arm. 1893 Heslop Northumbld. Gloss., Sitfast, a hard substance which sometimes forms in a wound and prevents it from healing. |
2. Sc. a. The plants restharrow and creeping crowfoot.
| 1765 A. Dickson Treat. Agric. (ed. 2) 114 Of this sort are some species of the thistle, and what the ploughmen call sit-fasts. 1808 Jamieson, Sitfasts, restharrow. 1825 ― Suppl., Sitfast, Creeping Crowfoot, Ranunculus Repens. |
b. An earth-fast stone. (Cf. B. 1 a.)
| 1813 R. Kerr Agric. Berwick i. 35 Some [stones] are even of many hundred weights, and are called sit-fasts. Ibid. 380. |
3. dial. (See quot.)
| 1828 Carr Craven Gloss., Sit-fast, a sottish person, one who sits long or is fast bound to his cups. |
B. attrib. or as adj.
1. a. Sc. Of stones: Firmly fixed or embedded in the ground (cf. A. 2 b).
| 1801 Farmer's Mag. Nov. 377 Land that is incumbered with sitfast stones, or with the roots of trees and bushes. 1880 W. Marshall Hist. Scenes Perthshire (1881) 312 The land contains numbers of sitfast stones. |
b. Remaining stationary; unmoving.
| 1857 Emerson Poems 70 To find the sitfast acres where you left them. |
2. Marked or characterized by sitting firmly; fixed, firm.
| 1807 G. Chalmers Caledonia I. i. iv. 165 Which the cultivators of the soil have not yet been able to dig up from its sitfast hold. 1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. i. ii. vi, For now no man..but will trot à l'Anglaise, rising in the stirrups; scornful of the old sitfast method. |