Is this a euphemism?

[kernowmaid]

Here's one for the Experts!

My violent gt grandad thumped a man because "he had looked in his daughter's can". (Nottingham Evening Post, 15 March 1890, courtesy BNA)

Does anyone have any idea what that means? (Apart from the obvious fact that G/G Edward Copley just loved to thump people!)

Jane

 

[Flook]

Hahahaha! Yes I think so, but I don't think it would get past the Mods !!

 

[kernowmaid]

Ah ...

I'm just too innocent! Sorry folks.

Jane

 

[Chimp]

Ah ...

I'm just too innocent! Sorry folks.

Jane

I must be too, never heard of it

 

[GrannyBarb]

From old movies here in the States, a person's "can" would be her posterior - what word do you use? Bum? Is that polite? So yeah, that would be worth a pop from Pop, perhaps....

 

[AnnB]

I must be too, never heard of it

Neither have I

Ann

 

[Bay Horse]

Nor me.

Bum is okay, GrannyBarb - I suppose derrière is a more delicate way of saying it!

Edward Copley certainly liked his hard labour, didn't he? Bit of a lad.

 

[arthurk]

I couldn't think of any obvious meaning to this, polite or otherwise, so I had a look in the Oxford English Dictionary (online access via my public library membership).

This gave the meaning GrannyBarb mentioned (bum), but said it was mainly a US usage, with the earliest reference from about 1930, so finding that meaning in Nottingham in 1890 seems a bit unlikely to me.

Since some meanings of can make it more or less a synonym of jug, I wonder if it is being used here as a euphemism. (Better stop there before the mods swoop...)

 

[Flook]

..and of coarse** there are always cantaloupes….. (I see them swooping as I type Arthur !!)…...

**usual spelling!