black-leg—
1. (UK coll.) a non-union workman; a strikebreaker:
- The police were used to protect the blacklegs, as those are called who work outside the Union movement.
2. (coll.) a professional gambler, especially a cheating one:
- You see noblemen and black-legs bawling and betting in the Cockpit.
3. a disease in cattle, caused by the fungus Leptosphaeria maculans, which affects the legs:
- A cattle disease, known as blackleg, is stated to have killed a number of cattle in the district.
Note: The expression does not correlate in meaning with its formal French counterpart pied noir—used of people of French origin living in Algeria during French rule:
- M. Fabre was an elderly colon, one of the original French families in Algeria—a pied noir, as they like to be called.
Blackfoot—
1. people belonging to the Blackfoot Indian Confederacy:
- Among the Blackfoot, stealing an enemy’s weapons was the highest exploit. 2. the language of the Algonquian
American Indians:
- A few detached languages in the west: Blackfoot, Cheyenne, and Arapaho.