killcalf en · NOUN
Etymology
From kill + calf.
Meanings
-
(obsolete) A butcher.
With any summe you are afraid to lose / But in the night, but then take heed of those / Base Padding Rascalls, for their kill-calfe law / I am not priuy to, I neuer saw / Them, nor their actions, then I cannot show / How to preuent the thing I doe not know.
1628, John Clavell, A Recantation of an Ill Led Life, page 35:Sir Francis Drake's ship at Deptford, my Lord Mayor's barge, and divers secret and unsuspected places, and there they make private shambles with kill-calf cruelty, and sheep slaughtering murder, to the abuse of Lent, the deceiving of the informers, and the great grief of every zealous fishmonger.
1630, John Taylor, “Jack A Lent: His Beginning and Entertainment”, in Works of John Taylor, the Water Poet, London: Reeves and Turner, published 1876, pages 12–13:
- (figuratively, obsolete) A violent person.