cit en · NOUN · etymology 1
Pronunciation
- /sɪt/
Etymology
Clipping of citizen.
Meanings
-
(archaic, derogatory) a citizen; a city dweller, a townsman.
Not forgotten are the blue noses of the carpenters, and how they scouted at the greenness of the cit, who would build his sole piazza to the north.
1856, Herman Melville, The Piazza:[…] the women of quality are frightened to see merchants wives and daughters dressed like themselves: this impudence of the city, they cry, is intolerable; mantua-makers are sent for, and the contrivance of fashions becomes all their study, that they may have always new modes ready to take up, as soon as those saucy cits shall begin to imitate those in being.
1714, Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees:As a new-comer in the township, as a cit, and a devotee to beer, Cummings was an excuse to keep an eye on Millie[.]
1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 154:If, when that war was declared, every one had been sure that not only should we fail to conquer the Transvaal, but that IT would conquer US […] how would the cits have felt then?
1911 October 26, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, or, An Oxford Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, published 1912, →OCLC:Here comes the muſty trader, running over vvith remonſtrances. I muſt banter the cit.
1760 January 28 (first performance), [Samuel] Foote, The Minor, a Comedy. […], London: […] J. Coote, […]; G[eorge] Kearsly, […]; T[homas] Davies, […], published 1760, →OCLC, Act II, page 56:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| cits | Number=Plur | lexicographic | |
| cit. | alternative | lexicographic |