Abob (Winchester), a large white jug containing about a gallon in measure.
Abounding (American), applied to a person unmistakably prominent at a party or a public meeting.
When we are told of a professed wit more than usually abounding at an evening party, there is no temptation to recruit our dictionaries from the English manufactured in the United States. — Evening Standard.
About East (American). A term used by men coming from the New England, i.e., the eastern and purely Yankee States, to signify anything that meets with approval Such things or people are said to be about East. J. Kussell Lowell in his "Letters" well illustrates this colloquialism of men who regard everything done in their native states as right, and whose eyes are often turned to the old home amidst the roughing and struggle of the wilder West.
There was not a Yankee when Horace Mann regretted we had not the French word s'orienter in our speech, "whose problem has not always been to find out what is about East. The enthusiastic (though quaintly exaggerated) love borne the East by its sons is, perhaps, most strikingly illustrated in Major Jack Downing’s oft-repeated phrase, 'I'd go East of sunrise any day to see sich a place.' "
About right (vulgarism). To do a thing about right is to do it thoroughly.
About the size of it (American). An expression indicating an average, or estimate, or expression of value, or an equivalent, in a very wide sense.
"Do you think that on the whole our Phebe would marry Seth?"
"Wall — I guess that on the whole that's about the size of it. She don't know her own mind yet, but she will when she comes to take the measure on't." — American Story.
When Eagle Davis died,
I was sittin' by his side,
'Twas in Boston, Massachusetts, and he said to me, " Old boy !
This climate as you see —
Isn't just the size for me ;
Dead or livin', take me back if you can to Ellanoy."
— A Ballad: In the Wrong Box.
"Do you take this woman, whose hand, you're a-squeezin', to be your lawful wife, in flush times an' skimp?"
" I reckon that's about the size of it, squire." — Chicago Ledger.
Above one's bend (American), beyond one's capacity.
It would be above my bend to attempt telling you all we saw among the Redskins. — J. T. Cooper: The Oak Openings.
In the South the phrase to signify the same idea is " above my huckle-berry," or "a huckle-
berry above my persimmon." Bend in this sense is probably derived from the Anglo-Saxon
bend, signifying a bond or anything that binds — a contract.
{{smaller|For ich am comen hider to-day,
For to saven hem, yive y may,
And bring hem out of bende.
— Anns and Amiloun, l. 1233.
"Above my bend" is "more than I am bound or held to do "
— a Saxon idiom.
