research can be so rewarding

I've been stealing time here and there to work on a rescue lesbians fic.

This has included reading about guns. I now know what Archie is bringing to Pat for her birthday:

One of the first pocket pistols was invented in 18th century England and named after the reigning Queen Anne of Great Britain. This single-shot flintlock is easily recognizable because the breech and trigger plate are forged into one piece with the lock plate. This firearm is an early breechloader that is loaded by unscrewing the breech with a barrel key.

Despite its female namesake, both men and women used Queen Anne pistols. They were produced in a variety of sizes, with most being considered coat-sized. An even smaller variant was colloquially referred to as a “muff” pistol because it could fit within a woman’s hand-warmer.

And that, y'all, is how I ended up checking on the history of "muff" as slang to confirm that it was in use by 1907. Which led to this choice observation:

Interestingly, the OED labels the pubic sense of “muff” as slang, but it labels “muff-diver,” “muff-dive,” and “muff-diving” as coarse slang. It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall as the dictionary’s editors discussed the labeling of these terms.