Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Paul Pry

Paul Pry is another fun phrase I found in Win Blevins' Dictionary of the American West. Want to take a guess as to its definition?

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According to Blevins' dictionary, Paul Pry is "a cowboy's name for a meddler." Wondering how *that* came to be, I turned to the internet. Dictionary.com pegs Paul Pry ("a nosy person") as originating from the name of the title character of the play Paul Pry (1853) by English dramatist  John Poole. A quick look at Wikipedia revealed the play "premiered in London on 13 September 1825 at the Haymarket Theatre and ran 114 performances." London, eh? And early-ish 19th century at that.

I think I could safely have a character mutter "What a Paul Pry" in my Silver Rush series... and I certainly prefer it to the phrase nosy parker. 😉

Three porcelain figurines and a hand-colored lithograph depicting English actor John Liston as the title character in John Poole's 1825 farce, Paul Pry.
Originals in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC (Julie Ainsworth, photographer) - http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/s/8390c7 (stable URL for high-resolution zoomable version), CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34638154