2. (old).—A workman's receptacle for stolen or refuse pieces, as cloth, type, etc.; one's eyf. Also Hell-hole and Hell-box. See Cabbage. Hell-matter = (printers') old and battered type.
(?). Newest Academy of Compliments. When taylors forget to throw cabbage in hell, And shorten their bills, that all may be well.
1589. Nashe, Martins Months Minde (Grosart), i. 185. Remember the shreddes that fall into the Tailors hell, neuer come backe to couer your backe.
1592. Defence of Conny Catching, in Greene's Wks., xi., 96. This hel is a place that the tailors haue vnder their shopboord, wher al their stolne shreds is thrust.
1606. Day, Ile of Gulls. That fellowes pocket is like a tailors hell, it eats up part of every mans due; 'tis an executioner, and makes away more innocent petitions in one yeere, than a red-headed hangman cuts ropes in an age.
1625. Jonson, Staple of News, i., 1. That jest Has gain'd thy pardon, thou hadst lived Condemn'd To thine own hell.
1663. T. Killegrew, Parson's Wedding, iii., 5., in Dodsley, O.P. (1780) xi., 452. Careless [addressing a tailor]. Why then, thou art damned. Go, go home, and throw thyself into thine own hell; it is the next way to the other.
1663-1712. King, Art of Cookery. In Covent Garden did a taylor dwell, Who might deserve a place in his own hell.
1690. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, s.v. Hell, the Place where the Taylers lay up their Cabbage, or Remnants, which are sometimes very large.
1698. Money Masters All Things, p. 56. The Cheating Knave some of the clues does throw Into his hell-hole; and then lets her know That he her web cannot work out o' th' Loom.
1704. Swift, Tale of a Tub, Sec. iii. The tailor's hell is the type of a critic's common-place book.
1725. New Cant. Dict., s.v.
1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s.v.
1814. C. Lamb, Melancholy of Tailors in Poems, etc. (Ed. Ainger), p. 333. The tailor sitting over a cave or hollow place, in the cabalistic language of his order, is said to have certain melancholy regions always open under his feet.
1853. Notes and Queries, 1 S., viii., 315, c. 2. The term cabbage, by which tailors designate the cribbed pieces of cloth, is said to be derived from an old word 'cablesh,' i.e., wind-fallen wood. And their hell where they store the cabbage, from helan, to hide.
3. (common).—A gambling house. [Whence Silver-hell = a gambling house where only silver is played for; Dancing-hell = an unchartered hall; and so forth.]
1823. Moncrieff, Tom and Jerry, ii., 4. Jerry. A hell, Tom? I'm at fault again! Log. A gambling house, Jerry!
1841. Comic Almanack, p. 280. A man at a hell, Playing the part of a Bonnetter well.
1849. Thackeray, Pendennis, ch. xxxix. He plays still; he is in a hell every night almost.
1890. Saturday Review, 1 Feb, p. 134, c. 2. These private hells nevertheless exist, and as all money found on the premises is seized by the police, the players have to resort to all kinds of subterfuge when the three loud knocks are heard which indicate the presence of the commissaire.
4. (venery).—The female pudendum; cf., Heaven. For synonyms, see Monosyllable. [See Boccaccio, Decameron.]
Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, subs. phr. (old).—Three ale-houses formerly situated near Westminster Hall.
1610. Jonson, Alchemist, v., 2. He must not break his fast In Heaven or Hell.
Hell broke loose, subs. phr. (common).—Extreme disorder; anarchy.
1632. Hausted, Rivall Friends, v., 10. Fye, fye, hell is broke loose upon me.
1672. Marvell, Rehearsal (Grosart), iii, 212. War broke out, and then to be sure hell's broke loose.
1703. Farquhar, Inconstant, iv., 4. Hell broke loose upon me, and all the furies fluttered about my ears.
