1663. Killigrew, Parson's Wedding [Dodsley, Old Plays (1874), xiv. 459]. In pure charity laid with him, and was delivered, of a magpie . . . for the midwife cried out 'twas born a bishop, with tippet and white sleeves.
1707. F. Brown, Works, i. 107. Let not those silkworms and magpies have dominion over us.
2. (thieves').—See Mag, subs. sense 2.
3. (common).—A pie; pastry. Fr. parfond.
4. (military).—A shot striking a target, divided into four sections, in the outermost but one. [It is signalled with a black and white disk]. Cf. Bull's-eye.
1884. Times, 23 July. Running through the scoring gamut with an outer, a magpie, and a miss.
Magpie's-nest, subs. (venery).—The
female pudendum. For synonyms
see Monosyllable.
c.1720. Ballad [Brit. Mus. Cat. 11621, i. 1. 75]. I heard the merry wag protest, The muff between her haunches, Resembled most a magpie's nest, Between two lofty branches.
d.1796. Old Ballad, 'Ken ye Na Our Lass, Bess?' [quoted by Burns in Merry Muses], Between her lily-white thies She's biggit a magpie's-nest.
Magsman, subs. (thieves').—A street
swindler, a confidence-trick
man. [From mag = to talk +
man]. For synonyms see Thieves.
Fr. un chevalier de la retourne.
1838. The Town, 'The Swell Mob,' 27 Jan. A magsman must, of necessity be a great actor, and a most studious observer of human nature . . . Without [these attributes] a man might as well attempt to fly as to go out for a 'mag-stake.'
1856. H. Mayhew, Gt. World of London, p. 46. The dependents of cheats; as 'jollies' and magsmen, or the confederates of other cheats.
1859. Matsell, Vocabulum, s.v. Magsmen. Fellows who are too cowardly to steal, but prefer to cheat confiding people by acting on their cupidity.
1864. Leeds Mercury, 7 June. The case we now report is one in which an Englishman—a Yorkshireman too—was swindled by two magsmen.
1887. W. E. Henley, Villon's Good Night. You magsmen bold that work the cram.
1888. G. R. Sims, in Cassell's Sat. Journal, 31 March, p. 7. The magsman earns his living by what is called the confidence trick.
Mahogany, subs. (common).—1. A
dining-table. Also mahogany-tree.
1840-1. Dickens, Master Humphrey's Clock. I had hoped to have seen you three gentlemen with your legs under the mahogany in my humble parlor in the Marks.
1847. Thackeray [in Punch, vol. xii, p. 13]. The Mahogany Tree [Title].
1847. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Vol. 11. ch. vii. 'I . . . can show a handsomer service of silver, and can lay a better dinner on my mahogany, than ever they see on theirs.'
1856. Strang, Glasgow & its Clubs, 102. With his legs below the tavern mahogany, etc.
1889. Licensed Victuallers' Gaz., 18 Jan. The men who had so constantly had their legs under his mahogany.
1892. Henley and Stevenson, Deacon Brodie, Tableau III. Sc. I. p. 30. Why man, if under heaven there were but one poor lock unpicked, and that the lock of one whose claret you've drunk, and who has babbled of woman across your own mahogany—that lock, sir, were entirely sacred.
2. (nautical).—Salt beef; old horse (q.v.).
3. (common).—See quot.
1791. Boswell, Johnson (1835), viii. 53. Mr. Elliot mentioned a curious liquor peculiar to his country which the Cornish fishermen drink. They call it mahogany; and it is made of two parts gin, and one part treacle, well beaten together.
