like sixty

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

like sixty (not comparable)

1. Quickly, easily or briskly.
   • 1856, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, page 191:

     But there's these poor, miserable trash have children like sixty; and there's folks living in splendid houses, dying for children, and can't have any.

   • 1873, Edward Eggleston, The Mystery of Metropolisville, page 119:

     In transcribing them, I have inserted one or two apostrophes, for the poet always complained that though he could spell like sixty, he never could mind his stops.

   • 1932, John Dos Passos, 1919, page 51:

     That Maine water was so cold that he came to like sixty sore as a pup and wanting to fight Joe.

   • 1965, Richard S. Prather, Meandering Corpse, page 91:

     I charged at those trees going like sixty — at least sixty, whatever it means — and was well in among them when a strange thing happened.

   • 1974, Margaret Laurence, The Diviners, page 28:

     Some kids still can't read yet. But they are dumb, dumb-bells, dumb bunnies. Morag can read like sixty. Sometimes she doesn't let on in school, though.

   • 1995, James P. Blaylock, All the Bells on Earth, page 269:

     Maybe the truth was that all of them — himself, the kids, Uncle Henry, Mrs. Biggs, even Argyle — were bailing like sixty, trying to stay afloat in their sorry little tubs.

• John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary