Heading
looked upon as a 'cadger,' and treated as one.
1882.—Daily Telegraph, 5 Oct., p. 3. col. 1. See on a Saturday night, in Whitechapel, the rank hypocritical cadger, whose coarse disguise of cleanness and respectability would scarcely deceive the most foolish persons at the West-end.
1884.—Jas. Greenwood, The Little Ragamuffins. I may here remark that amongst people of my born grade no one is so contemptuously regarded as he who is known as a cadger. The meaning they set on the word is not the dictionary meaning. The cadger with them is the whining beggar, the cowardly impostor, who being driven or finding it convenient to subsist on charity, goes about his business with an affectation of profoundest humility, and a consciousness of his own unworthiness; a sneaking, abject wretch, aiming to crop a meal out of the despising and disgust he excites in his fellow-creatures.
Cadging, verbal subs. (common).—Begging,
frequently eked out by
petty pilfering. [From cadge
(q.v.) + ing.]
1859. H. Kingsley, Geoffrey Hamlyn, ch. xv. I've got my living by casting fortins, and begging, and cadging, and such like.
1873. Jas. Greenwood, In Strange Company. But what one in vain looked for was the 'jolly beggar,' the oft-quoted and steadfastly believed in personage who scorns work because he can 'make' in a day three times the wages of an honest mechanic by the simple process of cadging.
Cady, subs. (common).—A hat.
[Derivation unknown.] Sometimes
written cadey and caddy.
For synonyms, see Golgotha.
1886. The A.B.C. of New Dictionary of Flash, Cant, Slang, etc., p. 85. Caddy: a man's hat.
1887. Watford's Antiquarian, April, p. 251. Sixpence I gave for my cadey A penny I gave for my stick.
Caffan.—See Cassan.
Caffre's Lightener, subs. (South
African).—A full meal. Fr. une
lichance (from licher = lécher, 'to
lick').
1864. Lady Duff Gordon. Letters from the Cape. I asked him [a young black shepherd at the Cape] to sing; and he flung himself at my feet, in an attitude that would make Watts crazy with delight, and crooned queer little mournful ditties. I gave him sixpence and told him not to get drunk. He said, 'Oh, no! I will buy bread enough to make my belly stiff; I almost never had my belly stiff.' He likewise informed me that he had just been in the tronk [Cape Dutch slang for a prison, answering to the English stone jug], and, on my asking why, replied, 'Oh, for fighting and telling lies.'
Cage, subs. (old).—1. A minor
kind of prison for petty malefactors;
a country 'lock-up.'
[From cage, a place of confinement
for birds, beasts, and,
formerly, human beings.] Once
in literary use; now thieves'
slang.
1500. Lancelot, 2767. As cowart thut schamfully to ly Excludit in to cage from chewalry. [m.]
1593. Shakspeare, II. Henry VI., iv., 2. Dick. Ay, by my faith, the field is honorable, and there he was born, under a hedge; for his father had never a house but the cage.
1748. T. Dyche, Dictionary (5 ed). Cage (s): a place of confinement for thieves or vagrants that are taken up by the watch in the night-time, to secure them till the proper officer can carry them before a magistrate.
1815. Scott, Guy Mannering, ch. liii. I was doomed—still I kept my purpose in the cage and in the stocks.
1839. Harrison Ainsworth, Jack Sheppard [1882], p. 78. The cage at Willesden was, and is—for it is still standing—a small round building about eight feet high, with a pointed tiled roof, to which a number of boards inscribed with the names of the parish officers, and charged with a multitude of admonitory notices to vagrants and other disorderly persons, are attached.
