bonus.]—See quot., 1851. For synonyms in the sense of money, see Actual.
1719. D'Urfey, Pills, 278. If cards come no better. Oh! oh! I shall lose all my buns. [m.]
1851-61. H. Mayhew, London Lab. and Lon. Poor, vol. I., p. 37. There are still other 'agents' among the costermongers, and these are the 'boys' deputed to sell a man's goods for a certain sum, all over that amount being the boys' profit or bunts. Ibid, p. 526. There are a great number of boys . . . engaged by costermongers or small tradesmen, to sell upon commission, or, as it is termed, for bunse (probably a corruption of bonus, bone being the slang for good). . . . The mode is this: a certain quantity of saleable commodities is given to a boy whom a costermonger knows and perhaps employs, and it is arranged that the young commission-agent is to get a particular sum for them, which must be paid to the costermonger; I will say 3s. For these articles the lad may ask and obtain any price he can, and whatever he obtains beyond the stipulated 3s., is his own profit or bunse. Ib., p. 36. But you see the boys will try it on for their bunts.
1881. A Chequered Career, p. 270. In the stable, and particularly in livery-stables, there is a box into which all tips are placed. This is called bunt.
Buncer, subs. (common).—One who sells on commission, as described under bunce (q.v.).
Bunch of Fives, subs. (common).—The hand or fist. [An obvious allusion to the five fingers gathered or bunched together on the hand.]
1847. Lytton, Lucretia, pt. II., ch. vii. 'Is this a h-arm, and this a bunch of fives?'
1863. C. Reade, Hard Cash, ch. xxxiv. 'Now look at that bunch of fives,' continued the master; and laid a hand, white and soft as a duchess's, on the table.
1882. Punch, vol. LXXXII., p. 133, col. 1. He smote crashingly down . . . with a lead-weighted truncheon he held in his dexter bunch of fives.
1888. Daily Telegraph, April 30, p. 3, col. 2. The fingers are bent into such an ungraceful bunch of fives, as to be suggestive both of chalkstones and of sausages.
English Synonyms. Mauley; cornstealer; fam or fem (this is said to be of Gypsy origin, and to mean five, i.e., five fingers, but see Fehm in German synonyms); famble (see preceding); picker; goll (a seventeenth century term—'make them hold up their spread golls,' says Ben Jonson, in the Poetaster); fin; daddle; flipper.
German Synonyms. Fehm or Vehm, or Vehn (more correctly Fem. This appears to be the same word as the English seventeenth century colloquialism for the hand [see preceding], and is most likely derived from the Swedish and Danish fem = five, than from the Gypsy which indeed contains no such word); Griffling or Greifling (from greifen, to seize); Jad (Hebrew jad, the hand); Kaf (from the Hebrew kaph; the [hollow] hand).
Italian Synonyms. Tarantola (an allusion to the many tentacles and close grip of the tarantula spider); cerra; calchi dell' ala (literally the foot of the arm. Cf., French doigts du pied); grettina (properly a small sand-*bank).
Spanish Synonyms. Labradora (this, it is curious to note, is an obsolete Spanish term signifying literally a laborious or hard-working woman, and the inference from this fact is obvious); anclas (literally anchors).
Bunco or Bunco Game, subs. (American).—A swindling game
