Promposals can mimic marriage proposals — dropping down to one knee, and all that — or they can be more fun. Most appear to simply spell “prom?” in a creative way, and involve flowers.

These were nearly all Yankees, regarded by the Southern people as a trafficking, tricky set, ready to sell a wooden nutmeg or any other sham. They, in turn, looked on the Kentuckians as a lazy, shiftless class, subsisting on hog, hominy and corn-bread, and willing tools in their hands.

The frowning lookes of fiery Tamburlaine, That with his terrour and imperious eies, Commands the hearts of his aſſociates, […]

The navy sometimes hired dhows for its patrols. […] If a dhow was stopped, the slaves could not be counted on to make their presence known, having probably been told that the Europeans would kill them.