May-day sweep

See also: May Day sweep

English

WOTD – 1 May 2012

Alternative forms

• May Day sweep

Etymology

May Day (workers' spring holiday) + sweep (shortening of chimney sweep)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /meɪ deɪ swiːp/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Noun

May-day sweep (plural May-day sweeps)

1. (largely historical) One of the sweeps (chimney sweeps), clad in bright clothes and garlands and carrying a blackened broom, in a May Day parade.
   • 1823, New Monthly Magazine‎^[1], volume 8, page 355:

     The common herd of mortals invent excuses : they shuffle like a May-day sweep, and lie like the prospectus of a new Magazine.

   • 1829, W. Brockedon, The Passes of the Alps, printed in The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, page 345 [2]:

     […] preceded by a drum and fife, and followed by the successful marksman, who, dressed out with flowers and ribands as fantastically as a May-day sweep in England, expressed his joy by dancing and pirouetting amidst his friends, who congratulated and cheered him.

   • 1843, Punch, volume 5, page 158:

     Thanks to certain alchemic pens, which have touched even garbage to gold-paper, murder has been as fine, and withal as jocund among us, as a May-day sweep.

   • 1847, Littell's Living Age‎^[3], volume 12, page 296:

     Brown and Emily Bustleton are whirling round as light as two pigeons over a dove-cot; Tozer, with that wicked whisking little Jones, spins along as merrily as a May-day sweep; Miss Joy is The partner of the happy Fred.

   • 1876, Lady Barker, The Kafir at Home, printed in The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, volume 23 (87?), page 221 [4]:

     […] but anything would have been better than sitting at table with a thing only fit for a May-day sweep on one's head.