2. (Stock Exchange).—An applicant for shares in new issues, who has no intention of holding, but prefers to forfeit the deposit money if unable to sell at a premium on allotment. Hence (3) any irregular 'outside' dealer. Also as verb.
1849. Kingsley, Yeast, ii. If the Stock-Exchange and railway stagging . . . are not The World, what is? Ibid., xii. The slipperiness, sir, of one stagging parson has set rolling this very avalanche.
1871. Atkins, House Scraps. A stag there was—as I've heard tell, Who in an attic used to dwell . . . And being blest, like many I know, With little conscience, and less rhino, Took to that frailest of all frail ways.
4. (old).—A professional bails-*man or alibi (Bee).
5. (common).—A shilling: see Rhino.
1887. Henley, Villon's Straight Tip. You cannot bank a single stag.
6. (provincial).—A romping girl.
7. (common).—A male. Whence stag-dance = a man's dance; a bull-dance (q.v.): also stag-party; stag-month = the month of a woman's lying-in; stag-widow = a man whose wife is in childbed.
18[?]. West Point [U. S. Mil. Acad.] Scrap Book. After supper a universal stag dance of not less than fifty couples came off. . . . The dancers arrange themselves in two long lines, facing each other, inside of a lane of candles, half buried in the ground, and above these three muskets forming a tripod, and each bayonet having a candle spluttering on its point. Drums, fires, and violins formed the orchestra. The cadets started with a simultaneous bound, involving themselves inextricably, and at last it became a mere competition who should work his legs and feet most excruciatingly.
1854. Baltimore Sun, 13 Nov. The prisoners in the jail at Lafayette, Indiana, have been provided with a violin; and, one of the number being a good player, they have frequent stag-dances.
1856. Mace Sloper (C. G. Leland), Knickerbocker Mag., April. I lose myself in a party of old bricks, who, under pretence of looking at the picture, are keeping up a small stag-party at the end of the room.
Adj. (old).—See quot.
1602. Dekker Satiromastix [Hawkins, Eng. Dr., iii. 141]. Come, my little cub, do not scorn me because I go in stag, in buff.
Verb. (old).—1. To find, to watch closely, to dog (q.v.): e.g., to stag a thief = to look on and spoil his game; to stag the push = to watch the crowd; 'Who's that stagging?' = 'Who's following?' (Grose, Bee). Also stagger = a spy.
1827. Lytton, Pelham, lxxxiii. Bess stags you, my cove! Bess stags you.
1828. Bee, Living Picture. Lest the transaction may have been stagged by some impertinent bystander or a trap, he mounts his box and drives away.
1859. Kingsley, Geoffrey Hamlyn, v. So you've been stagging this gentleman and me, and listening, have you
2. (common).—To dun; to beg.
Stage-fever, subs. phr. (colloquial).—A
craze for the boards:
hence stage-struck.
c. 1710. [Ashton, Soc. Life in Reign of Queen Anne, II. 21.] He was intended for the Church, but he caught stage-fever, ran away from school at the age of 17, and joined the theater at Dublin.
1821. Scott, Pirate, xxxix. The false tones and exaggerated gesture of the stage-struck pirate.
1851-61. Mayhew, Lond. Lab., III. 142. Some of the young fellows stick in their parts. They get the stage fever, and knocking in the knees.
Stager (or Old Stager), subs.
phr. (colloquial).—1. A person of
experience: cf. stager = a
player; whence (2) anything long
in use or evidence.
