Becoated

Just as the trio had sunk into their first forgetfulness, they were awakened by the sudden stoppage of the vehicle, a light at the door of an inn, and a party of rough discordant voices, bidding, however, a cordial farewell to a large, becoated, and ominous-looking stranger, who, in a broad Yorkshire dialect, wished his companions ‘a good noight,’ reminding them that he had paid his share of the reckoning.

Brothers mine, leave that sort of thing to the scented and vacuous dandies—the becoated and becollared tailors’ blocks who frequent such scenes, and whose loftiest ambition is to ogle the girls and obtain the reputation of a lady-killer.

The very cartoons of the popular press preach us sermons on usage. One in The New Yorker (22 Mar. 1982, p. 161) shows a becoated woman with arms akimbo and luggage packed addressing her husband, who is watching television with his feet on a footstool and his hand around a beer can: “You could care less? Don’t you mean you couldn’t care less? That kind of crummy English is why I’m leaving.”