the varieties of board and lodging, dinner of potatoes and bacon with buttermilk, bagging in the forenoon and afternoon, dinner and lunch, and rations allowed for women.
1879. In Temple Bar Mag., 4 Jan. Baggin' is not only lunch, but any accidental meal coming between two regular ones.
Bagging the Over.—See Jockeying the over.
Bagman, subs. (popular).—1. A commercial traveller. Formerly of respectable usage; now only employed contemptuously.
1765. Goldsmith, Essays, I. The bagman was telling a better story. [m.]
1840. Thackeray, Paris Sketch Book, p. 20. When all the rest of mankind look hideous, dirty, peevish, wretched, after a forty hours' coach-journey, a bagman appears as gay and spruce as when he started.
The term bagman took its rise in the saddle-bags in which the commercial traveller of the past century carried his patterns and goods. These saddle-bags being of larger dimensions than those usually carried by travellers on horseback, would designate the commercial traveller par excellence as the bagman.
2. In sporting slang, a 'bag-fox.'
1875. Stonehenge, Brit. Sports, I., II., iv., § 5. If . . . wild cubs cannot be found, a bagman or two must be obtained. [m.]
Bagnio, subs. (old).—A brothel. [From Italian bagno, a bath, properly a hot bath; whence an application as in the case of stew (q.v.), for a house of prostitution.]
1624. Massinger, Parliament of Love, II., ii. To be sold to a brothel or a common bagnio.
1851. Thackeray, English Humour, V. (1858), 243. How the prodigal drinks and sports at the bagnio.
1861. Wright, Domestic Manners in England during the Middle Ages, 491. They were soon used to such an extent for illicit intrigues, that the name of a hothouse or bagnio became equivalent to that of a brothel.
Bag of Bones, subs. phr. (familiar).—A lean, attenuated person; sometimes called a 'walking skeleton.' The French have un sac à os (often contracted into sacdos)—a literal translation. The term is quite modern, being traced by Murray no further back than 1838, when Dickens used it [in Oliver Twist, iv., 64].
Bag o' Moonshine, subs. phr. (common).—Nonsense.—See All moonshine.
Bag of Nails, subs. phr. (American thieves').—A state of confusion or topsy-turveydom. [Qy. from 'bacchanals.']
Bag of Tricks, phr. (common).—Generally, the whole bag of tricks; i.e., every expedient.
Bagpipe, subs. (common).—A windy talker; a senseless chatter-box. The derivation is obviously from the musical instrument of the same name.
Verb. (old).—A lascivious practice; too indecent for explanation.
Bags, subs. (popular).—An ironical nickname for trousers, thought by some to be of University origin, and borrowed from 'the variegated bags' of Euripides—[Greek: tous thyla/kous tous poiki/lous] (Cyclops., 182).
1858. Rev. E. Bradley ('Cuthbert Bede'), Adventures of Verdant Green, p.
