name given to certain projects for raising money on imaginary grounds.
1880. Hawley Smart, Social Sinners, ch. xix. 'My inheritance disappears as if it had been invested in a bubble company.'
Bubbled, ppl. adj. (old).—Gulled; deceived; befooled. [From bubble, to cheat, + ed.]
a. 1683. Oldham, Wks. and Rem. (1686), 66. Bubled Monarchs are at first beguil'd . . . at last depos'd, and kill'd. [m.]
1701. Defoe, True Born Englishman, Introd.
Who shall this bubbled nation disabuse, While they, their own felicities refuse?
1889. Gentleman's Mag., June, p. 598. Towards the end of the century [xvii] a person easily gulled, or bubbled was known as a 'caravan,' but earlier the term 'rook,' which is now restricted to a cheat or sharper, appears to have been applied to the person cheated.
Bubbling Squeak, subs. (army).—Hot soup.
Bubbly Jock, subs. (old Scotch).—1. A turkey-cock; a 'gobbler.' [Probably in allusion to the cry of the bird.]
1785. Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Bubbly jock, a turkey-cock.
1843. Thackeray, Irish Sketch Book, ch. xv. He took but one glass of water to that intolerable deal of bubbly jock. . . . Three turkey-wings and a glass of water.
1877. Besant and Rice, Son of Vulcan, pt. II., ch. xviii. Puffing his cheeks like some infuriated bubbly jock in a stable-yard.
2. (common.)—A stupid boaster.
3. (popular.)—A pert, conceited, pragmatical fellow; a prig; a cad.
1883. G. A. Sala, Living London, p. 113. Mr. Benjamin Bunny (Mr. J. L. Toole) is the good-natured husband of a pretty young wife (Miss Winifred Emery). Mr. Bunny is, to use a Scotticism, 'sair owerhanded,' not by a 'bubbly jock,' but by his wife's aunt.
Bubby.—See Bub and Bubbies.
Bucco, subs. (American thieves').—A dandy. [A corruption of buck (q.v.).]
Buck, subs. (common).—1. In the first instance a man of spirit or gaiety of conduct; later a fop, a dandy. [A transferred sense of buck, the male of the fallow deer.] In the form 'old buck' it is merely a familiar mode of address. The epithet, as applied to a man about town, is somewhat obsolete; masher, dude, and swell having taken its place. Cf., Blood.
1725. New Cant. Dict. Buck, as a bold buck, is sometimes used to signify a forward daring Person of either Sex.
1752. Fielding, Amelia, bk. X., ch. ii. A large assembly of young fellows, whom they call bucks.
1846-48. Thackeray, V. Fair, ch. vi. She had sate by him on the box of his open carriage (a most tremendous buck he was, as hesat there, serene, in state, driving his greys).
1889. Answers, Feb. 9. The ancient buck was last seen (at the age of eighty-four) wearing a wig, a pair of stays, 'plumpers,' rouge, and padding, and he daily anointed his face with a compound called 'skin-tightener.' 'Skin-tightener' removes wrinkles, and after the face has been washed with 'bloom of roses,' the wearer can strut forth with the consciousness that all the world takes him for a quarter of a century younger than he is.
2. (common.)—An unlicensed cabdriver. Apparently also applied to a sham fare.—See last quotation.
1851-61. H. Mayhew, London Lab. and Lon. Poor, vol. III., p. 362. The long-day men are the parties who mostly employ the bucks . . . they are glad to avail themselves of the services of a buck for some hours at the end of the
