meat safe

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meat safe (plural meat safes)

1. A ventilated cupboard used to keep meat away from flies and other pests.^[1]
   • 1854, Charles Dickens, Hard Times. For These Times, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC, 2nd book (Reaping), page 227:

     […] her uncomfortable, not to say, gritty, mittens (they were constructed of a cool fabric like a meat-safe) […]

   • 1895–1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “Book 2, Chapter 8”, in The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, published 1898, →OCLC, book II (The Earth under the Martians), page 277:

     It was now dusk, and after I had routed out some biscuits and a cheese in the bar—there was a meat-safe, but it contained nothing but maggots—I wandered on through the silent residential squares to Baker Street […]

   • 1950, Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice (The Legacy), London: Heinemann, Secker and Warburg, 1983, Chapter 9, p. 201,^[2]

     Masses of cooked meat were stored in a wire-gauze meat safe with nearly as many flies inside it as there were outside.

   • 1955, Patrick White, chapter 10, in The Tree of Man‎^[3], New York: Viking, page 140:

     Under the pepper tree the meat-safe hung, and swung, round and round, slowly, on a wire.

   • 1981, G. B. Edwards, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page‎^[4], New York: Moyer Bell, Part 1, Chapter 10, p. 62:

     She took [the leg of mutton] and put it in the meat safe outside.

2. (boxing, slang, obsolete) The stomach.^[2]
   • 1896, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 10, in Rodney Stone,‎^[5], London: Smith, Elder, page 172:

     “ […] but Bob ’e jumps inside an’ ’e lets ’im ’ave it plumb square on the meat safe as ’ard as ever the Lord would let ’im put it in.”

   • 1908, Sewell Ford, chapter 14, in Side-Stepping with Shorty‎^[6], New York: Mitchell Kennerley, page 221:

     […] with him carryin’ his guard high, and leavin’ the way to his meat safe open half the time, it was all I could do to hold myself back.

• meat-safe cot