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1742. Charles Johnson Highway-*men and Pyrates, p. 343. She takes him into Pissing Alley, in Hollywell Street, otherwise called the backside of St. Clement's in the Strand, so eminently noted for Taylors selling there their cabbage.
1748. T. Dyche, Dictionary (5 ed.). Cabbage (s.) . . . also a cant word to express anything that is pilfered privately, as pieces of cloth or silk retained by taylors, mantua-makers, or others.
1821. Cobbett, Weekly Register 28 April, col. 219. Taylor, of Charing Cross, will allow of no thumb-piece and of no CABBAGE.
1853. Notes and Queries, 1 S., viii., 315, col. 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.
1886. G. A. Sala, in Ill. Lon. News, 16 Oct., 394, 1. My correspondent's derivation of cabbage from caboged [caboged = 'cabossed' or 'caboched' in heraldy, in Fr. cabochée. See Littré] is good; but there is another one, namely, cabas, a basket in which the pickings and stealings of cloth might be hoarded.
The place where cabbage is stored is termed hell (q.v.) or one's eye (q.v.); these terms, as also goose (q.v.), a smoothing iron, are responsible for much cheap wit. Cf., Makings and Pickings. The Spanish has sisa = 'a petty theft.'
2 (old).—A tailor; sometimes cabbager, and formerly cabbage-contractor (q.v.). For synonyms, see Button-catcher and Snip.
1690. B E. Dict. Cant. Crew. Cabbage: a Taylor, and what they pinch from the Cloaths they make up.
1725. New Cant. Dict. Cabbage: Taylors are so called, because of their . . . Love of that Vegetable. The cloth they steal and purloin . . . is also called CABBAGE.
3. (old).—A style of dressing the hair similar to the modern chignon. [For suggested derivation, see sense 1.] Fr. un kilo.
1690. Mundus Muliebris. Behind the noddle every baggage, Wears bundle 'choux,' in English cabbage.
4. (schoolboys').—A translation or 'crib'; sometimes shortened to CAB (q.v., sense 2).
1868. Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, p. 129. Cabbage is also a common schoolboy term for a literary crib, or other petty theft.
5. (common).—A cigar. The French have une feuille de platane = a plane-tree leaf; also un crapulos or crapulados, a Hispanization of crapule = filth. For synonyms, see Weed.
1843. Punch's Almanack, August 12. The cigar dealers, objecting to their lands being cribbed, have made us pay for the cabbage ever since.
1848. Punch, vol. XIV., p. 298. q. Are cigars an English invention? a. No! the cigar is a Spanish article, that has been merely cabbaged by the British manufacturer.
1853. C. S. Calverley, Verses and Translations, p. 141 [ed. 1881], Carmen Sæcularœcularæ ?]. O fumose puer nimuim ne crede Baconi Manillas vocat, hoc prætexit nomine caules.
1889. Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday, July 6. Last week he offered me a weed—A worse one no man's lips e'er soiled. 'No, thanks,' said, 'I, know the breed; I much prefer my cabbage boiled.'
6. (venery).—The female pudendum. Cf., Greens. For synonyms, see Monosyllable.
Verb (old).—I. To purloin or pilfer pieces.
1712. Arbuthnot, History of John Bull, pt. I., ch. x. Your tailor, instead of shreds, cabbages whole yards of cloth.
1870. New York Evening Sun, May 24. Report of Speech of Mr Chandler. Let us knock the British crown to flinders; let us arrange for some one or two hundred thousand British graves forthwith, and cabbage the whole boundless continent without any further procrastination.
