Portuguese Synonym.—Medunhos.
1821. Haggart, Life, p. 121. My forks were equally long, and they never failed me.
1834. Ainsworth, Rookwood. 'Nix my Dolly.' No dummy hunter had forks so fly. Ibid. Jack Sheppard (1889), p. 20. I'll give him the edication of a prig—teach him the use of his forks betimes.
1841. Tait's Edinburgh Mag., VIII., p. 220. My forks were light and fly, and lightly faked away.
1891. Licensed Victuallers' Gazette, 9 Feb. Up they came briskly with smiling mugs, shook hands, then stepped back a pace or two, put up their forks, and the spectators were hushed into silence, for they saw that the battle was about to begin.
3. In plural (common).—The hands.
4. (old).—A gibbet; in the plural = the gallows. [fork is often applied to anything resembling a divarication (as of a tree, river, or road), etc.: Cf., sense 2. Cf., Cicero (de Div., i., 26). Ferens furcam ductus est: a slave so punished was called furcifer.]
5. (old).—A spendthrift.
1725. New Canting Dict., s.v.
6. (tailors' and venery).—The crutch (q.v.), nockandro (q.v.), or Twist (q.v.). [Thus, a bit on a fork = the female pudendum; a grind (q.v.).] Fr., 'Fourcheure, that part of the bodie from whence the thighs depart.'—Cotgrave.
Verb (old).—1. To steal; specifically to pick a pocket by inserting the middle and forefinger. Also to put one's forks down: Fr., vol à la fourchette.
1690. B. E., Dict. of the Canting Crew. Let's fork him, c. Let us pick that man's pocket, the newest and most dextrous way; it is to thrust the fingers straight, stiff, open, and very quick into the pocket, and so closing them hook what can be held between them.
1785. Grose, Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. Let us fork him.
1830. Lytton, Paul Clifford, ch. xvi. Yet so keen was his appetite for the sport, that the veteran appropriator absolutely burst into tears at not having 'forked more.'
1878. C. Hindley, Life and Times of James Catnach. Frisk the Cly and fork the Rag, Draw the fogies plummy.
2. (venery).—To open up, or spread (q.v.).
to fork out, or over (sometimes abbreviated to fork). Verb. phr. (common).—To hand over; to pay; to shell out (q.v.).
1830. Lytton, Paul Clifford, ch. xxxi. The person forks him out ten shiners.
1836. Dickens, Sketches by Boz, p. 84. His active mind at once perceived how much might be done in the way of . . . shoving the old and helpless into the wrong buss, and carrying them off . . . till they was rig'larly done over, and forked out the stumpy.
1837. Barham, I. L., The Execution. He Pulls up at the door of a gin-shop, and gaily Cries, 'What must I fork out to night, my trump, For the whole first-floor of the Magpie and Stump?'
1840. Comic Almanack. 'Tom the Devil,' p. 214. 'That's a nate way of doin' business, sure enough,' was the commentary; 'ounly I can't larn the sinse of going to a private lodging, where, if you ordher a kidney for breakfast, you're expected to fork out to the butcher.
1852. H. B. Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, ch. viii. You've got to fork over fifty dollars, flat down, or this child don't start a peg.
1864. Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, Bk. III., ch. i. 'Now,' said Fledgeby, 'fork out your balance in hand, and prove by figures how you make it out that it ain't more.'
