played either with cards or dice, not unlike three card monté. [From the Italian banco, a bench or bank].
1883. Philadelphia Times, No. 289, 2. 2. Tom's method of bunco was the well-known lottery game, [m.]
1888. Daily Inter-Ocean, Feb. 2. Robert B. Barnet, a plumber doing business in Grant Street, this city, was arrested in Allegheny to-night, on the charge of being implicated in the recent bunco game in which William Murdoch, an old and prominent citizen, was robbed of 10,000 dols.
Verb.—1. To rob, cheat, or swindle by means of the bunco game; or by what in England is known as the confidence trick, etc.
1887. Cincinnati Enquirer. Detectives Kirby and Funk last night spotted J. P. Ramby, the person accused of having bunkoed Ex-County Commissioner Stephens, of Greene Cotnty, out of 2,300 dols. in Xenia recently.
1888. Chicago Daily Inter-Ocean, April 14. John Brothers, a farmer living near Canton, Ohio, was bunkoed out of 2,000 dols. to-day by two sharpers who escaped.
2. From the primary meaning, the verb to bunco has come to be synonymous with any attempt at swindling.
So also with various derivatives, bunco-case, bunco-man, bunco-steerer (q.v.).
Bunco-Steerer, Bunko-Steerer, subs. (American).—A swindler; confidence-trick man. The means these men adopt to win confidence are always varied and sometimes unique. They are extremely wary, and it is often-*times with considerable difficulty that the arm of the law, long as it is assumed to be, can lay hold of them. A bunco-steerer may be well known to the police as a professional swindler, and he may be seen talking to his intended victim, but, unless caught in an overt act, he cannot be interfered with. People whom bunco-steerers lay their snares for, are generally men who stand high in their communities; consequently it is almost impossible to get victims to become complainants, as they do not care to figure in the police courts, and the thieves get practically a free field for their operations.
1876. Besant and Rice, Golden Butterfly, p. 235. The bunco-steerer . . . will find you out the morning after you land in Chicago or St. Louis. He will accost you—very friendly, wonderful friendly—when you come out of your hotel, by your name, and he will remind you—which is most surprising, considerin' you never set eyes on his face before—how you have dined together in Cincinnati, or it may be Orleans, or perhaps Francisco, because he finds out where you came from last; and he will shake hands with you; and he will propose a drink; and he will pay for that drink; and presently he will take you somewhere else, among his pals, and he will strip you so clean, that there won't be left the price of a four-cent paper to throw around your face and hide your blushes. In London . . . they do the confidence trick.
1888. Daily Inter-Ocean, Feb. 14. Andrew Carnegie fell into the hands of a bunco-steerer in Pittsburg, Saturday night, but was rescued by a detective before he lost anything.
Bundle, verb (old).—To practise bundling (q.v.).
1781. S. Peters, Gen. Hist. Connecticut. It is thought but a piece of civility to ask [a lady] to bundle.
1797. Sewell. Queeston is an odd way of wooing usual in some sea towns or Isles of Holland, after this manner. When the wench is gone to bed, the fellow enters the room and lays himself down in his clothes upon the blankets, next unto her, with one window of the room open, and thus he talks with her, very innocently—as it is reported.
