stramming

stramming

1. present participle and gerund of stram

stramming

1. (chiefly UK, dialectal) Big, monstrous; (of a lie) big, notorious.
   • 1831, Richard Polwhele, Biographical Sketches in Cornwall ...: In Three Volumes, page 67:

     A gissing 'twas gret stramming lyes I suppoze. There's one of es pranks I shall always remembar, ('Twill be dree years agon come the ighth of Novembar,) I'd two purty young mabyers as eyes cou'd behould, So fat as the butter, just iteen weeks ould […]

   • 1903, J George Stuart, Jan Pumroy on prayer, page 67:

     […] that stramming girt chap that work'th up to the granite quarries. When he was over to Jigford Bottom, he stretched his long arm out over the buke-board, with his thumb all a-twiddling, and says he, […]

   • 1912, Alice Spencer Geddes, “Helen Holmes of Hillholm Farm”, in Suburban Life, page 133:

     [One visualizes] a stramming and cowily-odoriferous perversion of the female gender striding across a soggy barnyard, a milk-pail swinging in each red and calloused hand, with her unevenly frayed skirts flapping in and out of the mud-puddles as she splashes through them spatteringly with her dingy rubber boots. […] [but] she isn't stramming or sloppy or even as to skirt length.

   • 2005 04 [?], Charles Gidley Wheeler, Armada: A Novel, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 10:

     'And that's a stramming great lie!' Harry exclaimed, flushing deeply, because he knew very well that it wasn't.

   • 2024 January 2, Maud Wilder Goodwin, Flint His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes, BoD – Books on Demand, →ISBN, page 164:

     He moderated his stramming gait to a stroll. At a jeweller's on Union Square he paused, and turned in, ostensibly to order some cards; but passing out he stopped surreptitiously before the case of jewels. The rubies interested him most. How well they […]