'I should say we did. We have elections and campaigns, and political parties, and bosses, and ringsters, and boodlers, and.' 'Boodlers?' 'Plenty of'em.' 'Well, well! Why, you are freemen just like us.'
2. (American thieves'.)—Boodlers and shovers are the men who issue false money (see Boodle, sense 3). Swindlers of this type generally hunt in couples; one carrying the bulk of the counterfeit money, and receiving the good change as obtained by his companion, who utters the boodle piece by piece. The game is generally worked so that at the slightest alarm the boodle carrier vanishes and leaves nothing to criminate his confederate.
Booget, subs. (old cant).—A travelling tinker's basket. Quoted by Harman [1567].
Book, subs. (sporting).—1. In betting, more especially in connection with horse racing, an arrangement of bets made against certain horses, and so calculated that the bookmaker (q.v.) has a strong chance of winning something whatever the result.
1836. Dickens, Pickwick, I., p. 400. And Wilkins Flasher, Esquire, entered it (the bet) in a little book with a gold pencil-case; and the other gentleman entered it also, in another little book with another gold pencil-case.
1837. Disraeli, Henrietta Temple, p. 260. Am I to be branded because I have made half a million by a good book?
1852. F. E. Smedley, Lewis Arundel, ch. liii. 'He has backed the Dodona colt for the Derby, and has got a heavier book on the race than he likes.'
1869. Gent. Mag., July, p. 231. He wins your money with a smile, will accommodate his book to suit what bets you may choose to make.
1879. Jas. Payn, High Spirits {Change of Views). He had a knowledge, too, of practical mathematics, which enabled him to make a book upon every great racing event of the year.
1889. Pall Mall Gazette, Oct. 21, p. 6, col. 1. Every sporting man is flattered if termed a sportsman, but it would be almost an insult to speak to a sportsman as a sporting man. Wherein does the distinction lie? it may be asked. The one is a lover of sport for the sake of the thing itself. The other is a lover of it for what he can get out of the business. The former may bet, but he does not look at sport through the glasses of a book; the latter always bets, and in fact would not care about it at all if he could not take or give odds.
2. (card-players'.)—The first six tricks at whist.
3. (general.)—The copy of words to which music is set; the words of a play; formerly only applied to the libretto of an opera.
1768. Sterne, Sentimental Journey, I., 180. A small pamphlet, it might be the book of the opera.
1889. Answers, 8 June, p. 24. The prompter had a little table on the 'prompt' side; that is, the right-hand side looking from the house, and his 'book' was one mass of directions, the margins being covered with little pictures and diagrams of the stage, showing the positions of the leading actors in every scene.
To know one's book, phr. (popular).—To have made up one's mind; to know what is best for one's interest.
c. 1879. Broadside Ballad, 'Ain't you glad you didn't.' Ain't you glad sometimes to know, A second thought you took, About a subject upon which You thought you knew your book; Now first of all you think you will, And then you think you won't, While someone says 'Go in and win!' And someone else says 'Don't.'
To suit one's book, phr. (common).—To suit one's arrangements. Cf., Book, subs., sense 1, the allusion being to betting books, in which bets are formally entered.
