(Printers’) Le ----, _the master or chief overseer_. Vingt-deux! _is
used to notify that the master is approaching._ A signal of the same
description used by English schoolboys or workmen is “nix!”
VINGT-HUIT-JOURS, _m._ (popular), _soldier of the reserve_. Thus termed
on account of his yearly twenty-eight days’ service.
VIOCQUE, _adj. and f._ (thieves’) _old_; _life_. From the old word
viouche, pronounced viouque.
VIOLON, _m._ (popular), boîte à ----, _lock-up at a police station_.
J’suis connu d’tous les sergents d’ville,
J’connais tout’s les boît’s à violon,
C’est chez eux qu’ j’élis domicile,
J’pourrais pas vivr’ dans les salons!
=E. DU BOIS=, _C’est Pitanchard_.
The word violon itself signifies _lock-up_, on account of the
window-bars of a cell being compared to the strings of that instrument.
The lingo terms, “jouer de la harpe,” _to be in prison_, and “jouer
du violon,” _to file through the window-bars of a cell_, seem to bear
out this explanation. Some philologists, however, think that the
stocks being termed psaltérion, “mettre au psaltérion,” _to put in
the stocks_, became synonymous of _to imprison_, the expression being
superseded in time by “mettre au violon” when that instrument itself
superseded the psaltérion.
VIOLONÉ, _adj._ (thieves’), _poor_. A man who comes out of prison is
generally “hard-up.”