With cheese and bread and rosé on the rocks of Rockport.Balbir Chatrik, director of policy at the Centrepoint charity, said: “These figures are shocking, but they only attempt to count the number of people sleeping rough on one night. The enthusiast buff was originally applied to people who like to go watch fires (everyone needs a hobby), and who were so-called because of the overcoats worn by New York firefighters in the early 19th century, made of buff leather. The nude buff and the enthusiast buff (as in theater-buff) both come from this same source. Well, buff is in more or less the same convoluted vein, as it comes from the Italian word for buffalo, and came into English via the Middle French buffle. Some of the nudie words in English have etymologies that are pleasingly straightforward starkers, for instance, comes from applying the - ers suffix to the stark portion of stark naked, which itself is the sense of stark meaning “to an absolute or complete degree”…um, that’s not actually so straightforward. Raphael Holinshed, The Second Volume of Chronicles, 1586Īnd yes, we know that’s more evidence for bare-arsed than you signed up for, but when you read a dictionary’s content you run the risk of 16th century ribaldry.

The residue like vnto the bare arssed rebels sculked to and fro but in the end, they and the others were all dispersed, & durst not to appeare. Barnabe Googe, A New Booke Calle the Shippe of Safegard, 1569

Shall off be plucked, and all things else beside,Īnd then the bare arsed Ape shall plaine be spide. The Purple garments wherein you long did playe,īy which your honour here you did receaue, Thomas Becon, The Reliques of Rome, 1563 ….whosoeuer shuld be chosen to be Christes vicar & Peters successour, he shuld first of al be set brechlesse & bare arsed in a certaine botomlesse chayre…. John Philpot, The Examincaion of the Constaunt Martir of Christ, 1556 Than to beg a breeche of a bare arst man.Īfore God you ar bare arst, in all your religion. There is nothyng more vayne, as your selfe tell can,

If you count it as a variant of the older British bare-arsed, it’s been used to refer to the unclothed for almost 400 years now. Bare-assed, which, you should know, is sometimes thought of as vulgar, is not a terribly new word.

Another word for running the numbers