bauch, baugh, a. Sc.
(bɑːx, bɑːf)
[perh. a. ON. bágr, uneasy, poor, hard up; cf. also bagr, awkward, clumsy.]
Weak, poor, pithless, without substance or stamina; ‘indifferent,’ ‘sorry,’ ‘shaky.’ Hence bauchly adv., bauchness.
| a 1560 Rolland Crt. Venus iv. 355 Thocht he and I throw play fell in bawch pleid. a 1603 Sir J. Melvil Diary 37 He fond me bauche in the latin toung. 1728 Ramsay Gent. Sheph. Poems (1844) 41 Without estate A youth, though sprung frae kings, looks bauch and blate. 1866 N. Brit. Daily Mail 9 Mar., Though the ice was rather baugh. 1723 M{supc}Ward Contend. Faith 155 (Jam.) How bluntly and bauchly soever the matter be handled. |
¶ The north. Eng. dial. form is baff, as in baff week, ‘hard-up week.’
| 1885 Weekly Times 21 Aug. 9/2 The workers in collieries receive their pay once a fortnight, and call the intervening no-pay week ‘baff-week.’ The expression ‘as long as a baff-week’ has become proverbial among them. |