Quotable quotes

Thought-provoking snippets from the OED quotation files...

fluid definitions...
1855 C. A. Bristed in Cambridge Essays, In America it [the word creek] is invariably used to designate a small river, except when it happens to be used to designate a large one.

...feeling off-colour...
a1722 E. Lisle Observ. Husb. (1757),They have a distemper in Leicestershire frequent among the calves, which in that country they call the black-legs... It is a white jelly settling in their legs, from whence it has its name of black-legs.

...and an early grunge band?
1908 Practitioner June, The important group of Seborrhoeic Dermatitis and the Seborrhoeids.