bacon, bacoun, bacun

[From O. Fr. & Prov. bacon. In O. Dut. bake, bæc = ham; O. H. Ger. backe (acc us, backen ); Low Lat. baco, bacco, bacho = a bacon hog, ham, salt pork.] 1. A term applied to the sides of a pig which have been cured or preserved by salting with salt and saltpetre, and afterwards drying with or without wood-smoke. By the old proce of rubbing in the saline mixture, the curing occupied from three to four months. The method now generally adopted on a large scale is to place the prepared flitches in a fluid pickle. The pickling, drying, and smoking now occupy not more than six weeks. The Wilts hire bacon is considered the finest, but that prepared in Ireland is almost equal to it. The nitrogenous or flesh-forming matter in bacon is small, one pound of bacon yielding le than one ounce of dry muscular substance, whilst the amount of carbon compounds, or heat-givers, is large, exceeding sixty per cent. Its digestibility, however, owing to the large proportion of fat it contains, is not le than that of beef or mutton. Bacon is exported in large quantities from America, of a quality superior to that prepared in many parts of England and Ireland. *2. A rustic, a chawbacon. "On, Bacons, on!" Shakesp.: 1 Henry IV., 11. 2. To save one's bacon: To save one's self from bodily injury or pecuniary lo . "What frightens you thus, my good son? says the priest; You murder'd, are sorry, and have been confest. O father! my sorrow will scarce save my bacon: For 'twas not that I murder'd, but that I was taken." Prior .