Foy, subs. (old).—A cheat; a swindle.
1615. Greene, Thieves Falling Out. You be crossbites, foys, and
nips.
Foyl-cloy, subs. (old).—A pickpocket; a rogue—B. E. [1690].
Foyst, subs. and verb. See Foist.
Foyster. See Foister.
Fraggle, verb. (Texas).—To rob.
Fragment, subs. (Winchester College).—A dinner for six (served in
College Hall, after the ordinary dinner), ordered by a Fellow in favour
of a particular boy, who was at liberty to invite five others to join
him. Obs. A fragment was supposed to consist of three
dishes.—Winchester Word-book [1891].
Framer, subs. (American thieves’).—A shawl.
1859. Matsell, Vocabulum, or Rogue’s Lexicon, s.v.
Frater, subs. (old).—A beggar working with a false petition.
1567. Harman, Caveat, s.v. Frater, a beggar wyth a false paper.
1622. Fletcher, Beggar’s Bush, ii., 1. And these what name or title
e’er they bear, Jarkman, or Patrico, Cranke, or Clapper-dudgeon,
Frater, or Abramman, I speak to all That stand in fair election for
the title Of king of beggars.
1791. Life of Bamfylde Moore-Carew. ‘Oath of Canting Crew.’ Rogue
or rascal, frater, maunderer, Irish toyle, or other wanderer.
Fraud, subs. (colloquial).—A failure; anything or body disappointing
expectation; e.g., an acquaintance, a picture, a book, a play, a
picture, a bottle of wine. Actual dishonesty is not necessarily
implied.
1882. Punch, LXXXII., p. 177, col. 1. A fraud, Charlie!
Fraze. See Vessel.
Freak, subs. (American showmen’s). A living curiosity: as the Siamese
Twins, the Two-headed Nightingale. [Short for ‘freak of nature.’]
Free, adj. (Oxford University).—Impudent; self-possessed.
1864. Tennyson, Northern Farmer, (Old Style), line 25.—But parson a
coomes an’ a goos, an’ a says it eäsy an’ freeä.
Verb. (old).—To steal; cf., annex and convey. For synonyms, see Prig.
1857. Snowden, Magistrates’ Assistant, 3rd ed., p. 444. To steal a
muff. To free a cat.
1859. Matsell, Vocabulum, or Rogue’s Lexicon, s.v.
1882. McCabe, New York, ch. xxxiv., p. 509. (Given in list of slang
terms.)
Free-fucking, subs. (venery).—General lewdness. Also the favour gratis.
Also fidelity to the other sex at large.
Free of Fumbler’s Hall, adv. phr. (venery).—Impotent; unable to do ‘the
trick.’ [Fumbler’s Hall = female pudendum.]
1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue s.v., A saying of one who cannot get his
wife with child.
Free, gratis,—for nothing, phr. (common).—A pleonastic vulgarism. Cf.,
On the dead.
To make free with both ends of the busk, verb. phr. (venery).—To take
liberties with a woman. Cf., Both ends of the busk.
Free of the house, adj. phr. (colloquial).—Intimate; privileged to come
and go at will.
Free of the bush, adj. phr. (venery).—On terms of extreme intimacy. See
Bush.
[For the rest, the commonest sense of free is one of liberality:
e.g., free of his foolishness = full of chaff; free-handed = lavish
in giving; free-hearted = generously disposed; free of her favours
= liberal of her person: free of his patter = full of talk.]
Free-and-Easy, subs. (common).—A social gathering where you smoke,
drink, and sing; generally held at a public house.
1796. (In Bee’s Dict. of the Turf, published 1823, s.v.). Twenty
seven years ago the cards of invitation to that (free-and-easy) at
the ‘Pied Horse,’ in Moorfields, had the notable ‘N.B.—Fighting
allowed.’
1810. Crabbe, The Borough, Letter 10. Clubs. Next is the club,
where to their friends in town, Our country neighbours once a-month
come down; We term it free-and-easy, and yet we Find it no easy
matter to be free.
1811. Lexicon Balatronicum. Free-and-easy Johns. A society which
meets at the Hole in the Wall, Fleet Street, to tipple porter, and
sing bawdry.
1821. Egan, Tom and Jerry (ed. 1890), p. 91. Blew a cloud at a
free-and-easy.
1843. Macaulay, Essays: Gladstone on Church and State. Clubs of all
ranks, from those which have lined Pall-Mall and St. James’s Street
with their palaces, down to the free-and-easy which meets in the
shabby parlour of the village inn.
1869. Mrs. H. Wood, Roland Yorke, ch. xii. He tilted himself on to
a high stool in the middle of the room, his legs dangling, just as
though he had been at a free-and-easy meeting.
1880. Jas. Greenwood, Odd People in Odd Places, p. 64. A roaring
trade is done, for instance, on a Saturday evening at the ‘Medley’
in Hoxton, a combination of theatre and music-hall, and serves as a
free-and-easy chiefly for boys and girls.
1891. Cassell’s Saturday Journal, Sept., p. 1068, col. 3. The
free-and-easy of to-day among us is a species of public-house
party, at which much indifferent liquor and tobacco are consumed,
songs are sung, and speeches are got rid of.
Freebooker, subs. (journalists’).—A ‘pirate’ bookseller or publisher; a
play on the word freebooter.
Free fight, subs. (colloquial).—A general mellay.
1877. W. Mark, Green Past. and Picc., ch. xxx. That vehement German
has been insisting on the Irish porters bringing up all our luggage
at once; and as there has been a sort of free fight below he comes
fuming upstairs.
Free-fishery, subs. phr. (venery).—The female pudendum. For synonyms,
see Monosyllable.
Freeholder, subs. (venery).—1. A prostitute’s lover or fancyman. Cf.,
Free-fishery, and for synonyms, see Joseph.
2. (old).—A man whose wife insists on accompanying him to a public
house.
1690. B. E., Dict. of the Canting Crew, s.v. 1785. Grose, Dict. of
the Vulg. Tongue, s.v.
Free-lance, subs. (common).—An habitual adulteress.
c. 1889. (Quoted from Spectator in ‘Slang, Jargon, and Cant’).
Sooner than be out of the fashion they will tolerate what should be
most galling and shaming to them—the thought that by these they are
put down among the free-lances.
Also said of a journalist attached to no particular paper.
Freeman, subs. (venery).—A married woman’s lover.
Freeman of bucks, subs. phr. (old).—A cuckold. [In allusion to the
horn.] Grose.
To freeman, or to make a freeman of, verb. phr. (schoolboys’).—To spit
on the penis of a new comer. Also To Freemason.
Freeman’s Quay. To drink, or lush, at freeman’s quay, verb. phr.
(old).—To drink at another’s expense. [Freeman’s Quay was a celebrated
wharf near London Bridge, and the saying arose from the beer that was
given to porters, carmen, and others going there on business.]
1811. Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v.
Freeze, subs. (colloquial).—1. The act or state of freezing; a frost.