Heading
for town, With the dashy, splashy, leary, little stringer, Horses knock'd up, men knocked down—Phililoo!
1852. Dickens, Bleak House, ch. lvii., p. 476. Look well after your own money, for they are dead certain to collar it, if they can.
1866. London Miscellany, March 3, p. 58. I slept in Holborn Workhouse. While I was asleep the other coves tore every rag up and collar'd my toke.
1866. Hindley, Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, p. 242. Old Sir John Collywobbles had six black horses, six white horses, and six pied horses. So I recommended my father-which-is-in-law to collar the lot.
1884. W. Besant, Julia, ch. iv. Your grandmother tells me you've plucked up spirit at last and won't let her collar more than half the wages.
To Collar the Bun, Cake, Banbury, or Confectioner's Shop, verb. phr. (common).—To be easily first; to surpass.—See Cake.
Out of Collar, adv. phr. (colloquial).—Out of work; out of cash; not in training. Conversely, in collar = in work; in comfortable circumstances; and, as regards training, 'fit' or 'in form.' [Simile taken from the stable, in allusion to a horse, i.e., with his collar on or off.]
French Synonyms. Balloter (tailors' = 'to be out of work'); caler (popular and nautical = 'to sink'); envoyer à la comédie (popular: to dismiss a workman for want of work to give him. Cf., remporter une veste); être à la comédie ('to be out of work'); un panas (popular: 'one out of work'); un inspecteur des pavés (literally 'an inspector of the pavement'); avoir de la laine (to be in work).
1857. Ducange Anglicus, The Vulgar Tongue. A decent allowance made to seedy swells, head robbers, and flunkeys out of collar.
1867. Scottish Journal, p. 39, col. 1. There is nothing that so materially and frequently effects the well-being and social position of a working man as the circumstances arising from being, in his own phrase, 'out of collar'—that is, his being unable to obtain work when he is able to do it and anxious to get it to do. Ibid. A workman on tramp will, if he is tolerably well known in the trade, and if he have, when in collar, shown a disposition to assist those who were out, often be kept among his former shopmates.
1880. Millikin, Punch's Almanack. Now October! Back again to collar, Funds run low, reduced to last 'alf dollar.
c. 1880. Broadside Ballad, 'Why Did She Leave her Jeremiah?' When I was in collar I loved a fair maid, With eyes of a sweet dark blue.
Against collar, adv. phr. (common).—Uphill; working against difficulties, or against the grain.
To be put to the pin of the collar, verbal phr. (common).—To be driven to extremities; to come to the end of one's resources.
To wear the collar, verbal phr. (colloquial).—To be subject to control not altogether to one's liking. The antithesis of 'to have the whip hand' and 'to wear the breeches'; etc.
Collar and Elbow, subs. phr.
(wrestling).—A term for a peculiar
style of wrestling—the Cornwall
and Devon style.
Collar-Day, subs. (old).—Hanging
day. [In allusion to the hangman's
noose.] Also Wry-neck-day
(q.v.); Fr., jour de la St.
Jean Baptiste.
Collared. To be collared,
verbal phr. (gaming).—To be
unable to play one's usual game
owing to temper, 'funk,' or other
causes.
