le truc = thieving; le grand truc = murder; des trucs = things. From Provençal tric = deceit); le pêgrage or pégrasse (thieves'): le grinchissage (thieves': specifically theft).
Spanish synonyms. Alicantina (= stratagem); amaño (= intrigue); andromina (also = trick or fraud); barrabasada (also
plot or intrigue); brega (also
pun or jest); engañifa (also = catch-penny); gatada (also = scurvy trick); pega or pegata (also = imposition).
c.1520. Boke of Mayd Emlyn, in Rimbault, Antient Poetical Tracts (Percy Society, 1841), 25. 6. For he used his playce—With maydens, wyves or nonnes; None amysse to him comes, Lyke they be of layes.
1647. Beaumont & Fletcher, Bonduca, i. 2. I have found you Your lays, and out-leaps.
1703. Farquhar, Inconstant, i. 1. We fancy he must have something extraordinary about him to please us, and that we have something engaging about us to secure him; so we can't be quiet, till we put our selves upon the lay of being both disappointed.
1706. Burton, Hist. of the Reign of Queen Anne (1880), Vol. ii. p. 159. After having reconnoitred it [Alicant], I would have given something to have been off of the lay, having found it quite another sort of a place than what it was represented to me to be.
1713. Wodrow, Analecta (Maitland Club), ii. 357. He an' the Treasurer have been at much pains to break steele off the lay he is upon.
1725. New Cant. Dict., s.v. Lay, an Enterprise, or Attempt; To be sick of the Lay, To be tir'd in waiting for an opportunity to effect their Purposes. Also an Hazard or Chance; as, He stands a queer Lay; He stands an odd Chance, or is in great Danger.
1779. R. Cumberland, Wheel of Fortune, iii. 2. Livery Serv. No offence to you, Mr. Weazel, but we would fain know what lay we are to be upon; and whether the strange gentleman will be agreeable to allow us for bags, canes, and nosegays.
1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s.v.
1811. Lex. Bal., s.v.
1819. Moore, Tom Crib, p. 36. We who're of the Fancy-lay, As dead hands at a mill as they.
1836. Dickens, Oliver Twist, ch. xliii. The lay is just to take that money away.
1852. Dickens, Bleak House, He's not to be found on his old lay.
1859. Matsell, Vocabulum, s.v. Lay, A particular kind of rascality, trade or profession. . . . What's the cove's lay? Why . . . he's on the ken-crack [lay]—housebreaking.
1862. H. Kingsley, Ravenshoe, ch. xli. One on 'em plays the bagpipes with a bellus against the waterbutt of a Sunday evening when they're off the lay.
1865. Daily Review, Feb. Captain Corbett said the vessel was going on the same lay that the Alabama had gone. I afterwards went back in the Laurel to Teneriffe.
1877. Five Years' Penal Servitude, iii. p. 144. His peculiar lay or line of business, which always brought him into trouble, was the stealing of pewter pots.
1888. J. Runciman, The Chequers, 82. Blakey's found out as you've got respectable relations as wouldn't like to see your name in the papers, and he's goin' to 'ave a new lay on.
1889. Answers, 27 July, p. 136, col. 2. The secret marks have considerable significance. They briefly tell the begging-letter writer what sort of lay to come for. Each charitable person has his, or her, particular soft spot, and it is this which the begging-letter writer endeavours to ascertain.
1892. Kipling, Barrack Room Ballads, 'The Widow's Party.' Out with the rest on a picnic lay.
1895. H. B. Marriott Watson, in New Review, July, p. 2. For it was his aim to stand in security somewhere half-way 'twixt us fellows and the Law, and squeeze the both; and but that he had the lives of scores upon his tongue, and was very useful withal at a pinch, both to us on the lay and to the traps, he would have been hanged or pistolled for his pains long since.
