elegant, or any fashion, act, or measure which is carried to the highest pitch, is likewise illustrated by the same emphatical phrase.
BARKING-IRONS, pistols; an obsolete term.
BARNACLES, spectacles.
BASH, to beat any person by way of correction, as the woman you live with, &c.
BASTILE, generally called, for shortness, the Steel; a cant name for the House of Correction, Cold-Bath-Fields, London.
BEAK, a magistrate; the late Sir John Fielding, of police memory, was known among family people by the title of the blind beak.
BEAN, a guinea.
BEEF, stop thief! to beef a person, is to raise a hue and cry after him, in order to get him stopped.
BELLOWSER. See WIND.
BENDER, a sixpence.
BENDER, an ironical word used in conversation by flash people; as where one party affirms or professes any thing which the other believes to be false or insincere, the latter expresses his incredulity by exclaiming bender! or, if one asks another to do any act which the latter considers unreasonable or impracticable, he replies, O yes, I'll do it—bender; meaning, by the addition of the last word, that, in fact, he will do no such thing.
BEST, to get your money at the best, signifies to live by dishonest or fraudulent practices, without labour or industry, according to the general acceptation of the latter word; but, certainly, no persons have more occasion to be industrious, and in a state of perpetual action than
