See breath and britches on Wiktionary
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"ref": "1990, Lee K. Abbott, “Why I Live in Hanoi”, in Dreams of Distant Lives, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, page 109:",
"text": "[…] San Antonio Mexicans named Cisco and Pancho, both in black-market sombreros. They were skinny—all breath and britches—and short-timers, soon to go home.",
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"(Southern US, figurative) The minimal qualities that make one a person (especially a man), either",
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"ref": "1957, Frank Yerby, chapter 22, in Fairoaks, New York: Pocket Books, published 1963, page 295:",
"text": "“[…] I don’t know a blessed thing but planting. What does she expect me to do? Hire out as an overseer?”\nI would, Guy thought clearly, coldly; before I’d accept the slightest favor from anybody. But you haven’t got that, have you, Kil? Reckon you never were anything more than breath and britches.",
"type": "quote"
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{
"ref": "1966, Margaret Walker, Jubilee, New York: Houghton Mifflin, published 2016, Part I, Chapter 3, p. 54:",
"text": "Man ain’t nothing but trouble, just breath and britches and trouble. Don’t let him feel all over you, now, don’t let a no-good man touch you, else he’ll big you up sho-nuff.",
"type": "quote"
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"ref": "1981, John Edgar Wideman, “The Songs of Reba Love Jackson”, in Damballah, New York: Houghton Mifflin, published 1998, page 122:",
"text": "We’s all God’s creatures and it ain’t in the Bible to sit in the back of no buses or bow down to any man what ain’t nothing but breath and britches.",
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"ref": "1937, Zora Neale Hurston, chapter 2, in Their Eyes Were Watching God, University of Illinois Press, published 1978, page 27:",
"text": "“[…] Ah don’t want no trashy nigger, no breath-and-britches, lak Johnny Taylor usin’ yo’ body to wipe his foots on.”",
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"(Southern US, figurative) A man of no substance."
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},
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"ref": "1981, John Edgar Wideman, “The Songs of Reba Love Jackson”, in Damballah, New York: Houghton Mifflin, published 1998, page 122:",
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"(Southern US, figurative) A man of no substance."
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
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