cit arch.
(sɪt)
Also 7–8 citt.
1. a. Short for citizen; usually applied, more or less contemptuously, to a townsman or ‘cockney’ as distinguished from a countryman, or to a tradesman or shopkeeper as distinguished from a gentleman; Johnson says ‘A pert low townsman; a pragmatical trader’.
| a 1644 Cleveland Rupertismus (1659), Let Isaac [i.e. Ld. Mayor Pennington] and his Citts flay off the plate That tips their antlers for the Calf of State. 1674 Marvell Ballad, O ye addle-brain'd cits! 1735 Pope Donne's Sat. iv. 144 Why Turnpikes rose, and now no Cit nor clown Can gratis see the country, or the town? 1771 Johnson Th. Falkl. Isl. Wks. X. 63 The cits of London and the boors of Middlesex. 1841 Catlin N. Amer. Ind. (1844) II. liv. 185, I intend to..send it to New York for the cits to read. 1881 Besant & Rice Chapl. of Fleet i. viii, The low hills of Highgate, Hampstead, and Hornsey, the paradise of cits. |
b. Used as feminine: (but cf. citess.)
| 1706 Estcourt Fair Examp. i. i. 9 Mrs. Whims. Poor ignorant Citts, that never knew what the Fashions were in our Lives. 1751 Johnson Rambler No. 116 ¶10 The country ladies despised her as a cit. |
c. ? Citizenship, citizen character.
| a 1745 Swift Wks. (1841) II. 56 The knighthood of an alderman spoils his cit. |
d. Comb., as cit-like, cit-looking, adj.
| a 1763 Shenstone Œcon. 1 The world, the cit-like world Bids thee beware. 1848 W. K. Kelly tr. L. Blanc's Hist. Ten Y. I. 500 Their cit-like importance. 1828 Blackw. Mag. XXIII. 364 Decent cit-looking elderly gentlemen. |
2. pl. Civilian clothes; ‘civvies’. U.S. Mil. slang.
| 1829 in O. E. Wood West Point Scrap Bk. (1871) 47 My uniform I've taken off, My ‘cits’ I've just put on. 1895 C. King Fort Frayne vi. 86 Will was..vaguely longing to get out and air his new ‘cits’. 1907 Chicago Tribune 8 May 2 They were in full dress uniform. Later they were joined by Maj. Judson of the engineers in ‘cits’. |