soft a [phonetics unavailable]. OED ~ a 23 b ~ bread (1745 quot); SMYTH 637 ~ tack; EDD 1 (35) ~ Tuesday. Cp HARD.
Comb soft-bread: perishable bread baked on vessel or ashore, as distinguished from ship's biscuit; LOAF.
1854 [FEILD] 53 Sent some flour to be baked by one of the fishermen's wives, which is our usual mode of obtaining occasional supplies of softbread. We have been more than a week at one time with only biscuit. 1900 DEVINE & O'MARA 115 Mr Vail arrived here in the early fifties, and started a small bakery for soft bread; making a little money, he soon embarked in the hard bread business, which, at that time, was supplied from Hamburg. 1924 ENGLAND 151 I mind the time ... when the men didn't use to get no soft bread at all. T 198-65 We'd have plenty o' soft bread, we'll say, loaf, but all he wanted was hard bread, hard bread an' tea. T 393/4-67 What you had in your bread box, brother, was hard bread. Not too much soft bread was carried out in boat. 1975 BUTLER 90 We bought our supplies at a store in Lewisporte—flour, sugar, tea, hard bread, pork, and some tobacco for the boys... We did not have any soft bread or butter, no vegetables, no beef.
soft cure, ~ cured: cod-fish prepared for market by salting but with a short drying period; LABRADOR.
1925 Journ of Assembly 142 The price of soft cured Labrador [fish] reached $8.00 in the local market, while the shore cured article fetched as high as $11.00 per quintal. 1978 Evening Telegram 16 Dec, p. 14 He was lost after the [vessel] he was on then was coming up from the Labrador with a load of soft cure and ran ashore on the Offer Wadhams.
soft tack: see soft bread.
T 104-64 No soft tack at all, not in th' early days, the real early days, no soft tack; all hard bread. T 194-65 We couldn't give 'em soft tack, you know; the cook wouldn't have enough, would he? But we give'em more hard bread [than] they'd a mind to eat.
soft tuesday: Shrove Tuesday.
C 67-5 Pancake Day is called Soft Tuesday. Soft Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday. M 69-5 Soft Tuesday and Ash Wednesday were not observed as holidays. On Soft Tuesday many families had pancakes for dinner. 1972 MURRAY 231 On Shrove Tuesday (also called Soft Tuesday), everyone ate pancakes for supper. 1979 TIZZARD 274-5 The pancakes on Shrove (we always called it 'soft') Tuesday contained a ring, a button, and a five cent piece. I sort of dreaded that day because I certainly didn't want to get the button for that meant I would not be married, but be a bachelor all my life.
