Sweating

sweating

A mode of diminishing the gold coin, practiced chiefly by the Jews, who corrode it with aqua regia.

Sweating was also a diversion practised by the bloods of the last century, who styled themselves Mohocks : these gentlemen lay in wait to surprise some person late in the night, when surrouding him, they with their swords pricked him in the posteriors, which obliged him to be constantly turning round ; this they continued till they thought him sufficiently sweated.

The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

Sweat"ing,

a. & n. from Sweat, v.

Sweating bath, a bath producing sensible sweat; a stove or sudatory. -- Sweating house, a house for sweating persons in sickness. -- Sweating iron, a kind of knife, or a piece of iron, used to scrape off sweat, especially from horses; a horse scraper. -- Sweating room. (a) A room for sweating persons. (b) Dairying A room for sweating cheese and carrying off the superfluous juices. -- Sweating sickness Med., a febrile epidemic disease which prevailed in some countries of Europe, but particularly in England, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, characterized by profuse sweating. Death often occured in a few hours.

© Webster 1913.