goat n
1 Epithet for resident of a neighbouring community.
C 66-3 Fortune 'goats' / Grand Bank 'shags' / All tied up in wrapper bags. C 69-15 Billy goat, nanny goat: nicknames for people born on the Southside, St John's. 1976 CASHIN 52 The saying goes at one time a 'goat spoke in Mobile.' From that time onwards the people in that settlement were called Mobile goats. 1977 Evening Telegram 24 Aug, p. 6 [letter signed] A [Upper] gullie Goat and a Newfie forever.
2 One of the figures of a cotillion; a dance.
C 75-138 An old fashioned square dance done in some outport communities is the 'Goat.' In this dance there are parts called 'going on the Labrador,' 'through the bushes,' etc. C 75-46 Today the young people only dance the rock and roll type of dance, as opposed to their parents, who only danced the cotillion or the goat as they called it.
3 Weather proverb.
1937 DEVINE 67 If the goats come home in files, Get your fish in covered piles.
4 Attrib, comb goat rubber; also sheep chaser, ~ rubber: knee-length rubber boot; RUBBER (P 65-64).
P 148-66 'Get your sheep chasers on today.' This was often said to anyone wearing knee-high rubber boots, whether bought that length or cut down from hip rubbers which had cracked above the knee. It is usually said jokingly. C 71-118 Sheep chasers are rubber boots cut off at the knee. It would be too warm to wear the long boots in the spring and even if turned down, they would be very heavy and bulky. P 148-80 They are called goat rubbers because the men used to put the rubbers on the back legs of the goat, or of a sheep.
goat sculpin: scavenger fish (Myoxocephalus octodecemspinosus; M. scorpius); SCULPIN.
1967 Nfld Qtly June, p. 10 Occasionally there was the thrill of spearing a 'goat' sculpin, so named, presumably, because of its extraordinarily long horns, and of feeling, as the spear pierced its flesh, a strong vibration run through the shaft of the spear and through the arm to the very shoulder, being sensed almost as a minor electric shock.
goat shoe: winter foot covering for goat hauling sled (C 70-15).
goat's house: quarter hatch on sealing vessel
(1925 Dial Notes v, 332).
1924 ENGLAND 116 Another grinned from the 'goat's house' or 'lobby,' near the aft winch.
