Crude but vigorous and ready for action. This Americanism dates from the early nineteenth century. In print it first appeared in a collection of Diaries and Letters (1810) by F. J. Jackson: “A more rough and ready state of things than we had before been accustomed to.” In the 1840s it became the nickname for General Zachary Taylor, “Old Rough and Ready,” hero of the Mexican War (1846–48) and later the twelfth president of the United States. By then the term was used in England as well; it appears in Robert Browning’s “Bishop Blougram’s Apology” (1855): “You, for example, clever to a fault, The rough and ready man who write apace, Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less.”