![]() It is unlikely, but not impossible, that Scott was aware of the American slang phrase. “It wants a new stock, a new lock, and a new barrel, like the Highlandman’s pistol.”- Old Scottish Saying. And the “Highlander’s gun” is a reference to a recently published poem by William Jerdan, “The Highlandman’s Pistol,” which opens with the epigraph: Redford” is not a person, but rather the original farmhouse that stood on the property, no doubt so-called after its former tenant. ![]() Scott is writing about the renovations of his home Abbotsford. One needs to know the background to understand the references. In the mean time, “the cabin is convenient.” Redford, by the time she was raised, altered, and beautified, for, like the Highlander’s gun, she wants stock, lock, and barrel, to put here into repair. I do not believe I should save £100 by retaining Mrs. The earliest use of the phrase recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary is in a letter by Walter Scott dated 29 October 1817, but this would seem to be a coincidental use, unconnected to the American phrase. So that the tonnage of the state of Massachusetts alone, exceeds that of the whole southern states put together, “stock, lock, and barrel,” 118,708 tons and 68 ninety fifths. The whole of the southern states, including the city of Baltimore, own 344,336 tons and 15 ninety-fifths. And indeed, we see a use of the phrase that is utterly divorced from the context of firearms about a month later, in the Middlesex Gazette of 21 February 1811: This is a literal reference to a firearm, but the use of quotation marks around the phrase indicates that the slang sense of whole was already in use and the writer intended both the literal and metaphorical meaning. In the hands of a company of the United States rifle men, stationed at Fort Columbus he found some arms of a construction most complete, they were of the short pattern of about 2 feet 3 inches from the breach to muzzle, not only handsome to the eye, but the workmanship “stock, lock, and barrel” were excellent and upon the proof-no weapon could be more easily managed nor more effective. The earliest hint that the phrase was in use dates to 16 January 1811, when it appears in the Philadelphia newspaper Aurora for the Country: In early use, the order of the words is stock, lock, and barrel, and the present-day order seems to have become fixed in the mid nineteenth century. While one can find combinations of the three words literally referring to firearms going back earlier, the use as a slang phrase arose in North America around the turn of the nineteenth century, and it may in fact be based on an older Scottish adage, although that adage isn’t recorded until the same time. The underlying etiology of the phrase is that of a musket, of which the lock (i.e., firing mechanism), stock, and barrel are the principal parts. Lock, stock, and barrel is a slang expression meaning the whole or entirety of something.
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