To take or yank the bun, verbal phr. (general).—To take first place; to
obtain first honours. A variant of take the cake.—See Cake. The French
say décrocher la timballe.
Bunce, Bunse or Bunt, subs. (old).—Originally money, a signification
which it still retains; more generally, however, profit, gain, anything
to the good. [Thought to be a corruption of bonus.]—See quot., 1851.
For synonyms in the sense of money, see Actual.
1719. D’Urfey, Pills, 278. If cards come no better. Oh! oh! I shall
lose all my buns. [M.]
1851–61. H. Mayhew, London Lab. and Lon. Poor, vol. I., p. 37.
There are still other ‘agents’ among the costermongers, and these
are the ‘boys’ deputed to sell a man’s goods for a certain sum, all
over that amount being the boys’ profit or bunts. Ibid., p. 526.
There are a great number of boys ... engaged by costermongers or
small tradesmen, to sell upon commission, or, as it is termed, for
bunse (probably a corruption of bonus, bone being the slang for
good).... The mode is this: a certain quantity of saleable
commodities is given to a boy whom a costermonger knows and perhaps
employs, and it is arranged that the young commission-agent is to
get a particular sum for them, which must be paid to the
costermonger; I will say 3s. For these articles the lad may ask and
obtain any price he can, and whatever he obtains beyond the
stipulated 3s., is his own profit or bunse. Ib., p. 36. But you see
the boys will try it on for their bunts.
1881. A Chequered Career, p. 270. In the stable, and particularly
in livery-stables, there is a box into which all tips are placed.
This is called bunt.
Buncer, subs. (common).—One who sells on commission, as described under
bunce (q.v.).
Bunch of Fives, subs. (common).—The hand or fist. [An obvious allusion
to the five fingers gathered or bunched together on the hand.]
1847. Lytton, Lucretia, pt. II., ch. vii. ‘Is this a h-arm, and
this a bunch of fives?’
1863. C. Reade, Hard Cash, ch. xxxiv. ‘Now look at that bunch of
fives,’ continued the master; and laid a hand, white and soft as a
duchess’s, on the table.
1882. Punch, vol. LXXXII., p. 133, col. 1. He smote crashingly down
... with a lead-weighted truncheon he held in his dexter bunch of
fives.
1888. Daily Telegraph, April 30, p. 3, col. 2. The fingers are bent
into such an ungraceful bunch of fives, as to be suggestive both of
chalkstones and of sausages.
English Synonyms. Mauley; cornstealer; fam or fem (this is said to be
of Gypsy origin, and to mean five, i.e., five fingers, but see Fehm in
German synonyms); famble (see preceding); picker; goll (a seventeenth
century term—‘make them hold up their spread golls,’ says Ben Jonson,
in the Poetaster); fin; daddle; flipper.
German Synonyms. Fehm or Vehm, or Vehn (more correctly Fem. This
appears to be the same word as the English seventeenth century
colloquialism for the hand [see preceding], and is most likely derived
from the Swedish and Danish fem = five, than from the Gypsy which
indeed contains no such word); Griffling or Greifling (from greifen, to
seize); Jad (Hebrew jad, the hand); Kaf (from the Hebrew kaph; the
[hollow] hand).
Italian Synonyms. Tarantola (an allusion to the many tentacles and
close grip of the tarantula spider); cerra; calchi dell’ ala (literally
the foot of the arm. Cf., French doigts du pied); grettina (properly a
small sandbank).
Spanish Synonyms. Labradora (this, it is curious to note, is an
obsolete Spanish term signifying literally a laborious or hard-working
woman, and the inference from this fact is obvious); anclas (literally
anchors).
Bunco or Bunco Game, subs. (American).—A swindling game played either
with cards or dice, not unlike three card monté. [From the Italian
banco, a bench or bank].
1883. Philadelphia Times, No. 289, 2. 2. Tom’s method of bunco was
the well-known lottery game. [M.]
1888. Daily Inter-Ocean, Feb. 2. Robert B. Barnet, a plumber doing
business in Grant Street, this city, was arrested in Allegheny
to-night, on the charge of being implicated in the recent bunco
game in which William Murdoch, an old and prominent citizen, was
robbed of 10,000 dols.
Verb.—1. To rob, cheat, or swindle by means of the bunco game; or by
what in England is known as the confidence trick, etc.
1887. Cincinnati Enquirer. Detectives Kirby and Funk last night
spotted J. P. Ramby, the person accused of having bunkoed Ex-County
Commissioner Stephens, of Greene County, out of 2,300 dols. in
Xenia recently.
1888. Chicago Daily Inter-Ocean, April 14. John Brothers, a farmer
living near Canton, Ohio, was bunkoed out of 2,000 dols. to-day by
two sharpers who escaped.
2. From the primary meaning, the verb to bunco has come to be
synonymous with any attempt at swindling.
So also with various derivatives, bunco-case, bunco-man, bunco-steerer
(q.v.).
Bunco-Steerer, Bunko-Steerer, subs. (American).—A swindler;
confidence-trick man. The means these men adopt to win confidence are
always varied and sometimes unique. They are extremely wary, and it is
oftentimes with considerable difficulty that the arm of the law, long
as it is assumed to be, can lay hold of them. A bunco-steerer may be
well known to the police as a professional swindler, and he may be seen
talking to his intended victim, but, unless caught in an overt act, he
cannot be interfered with. People whom bunco-steerers lay their snares
for, are generally men who stand high in their communities;
consequently it is almost impossible to get victims to become
complainants, as they do not care to figure in the police courts, and
the thieves get practically a free field for their operations.
1876. Besant and Rice, Golden Butterfly, p. 235. The bunco-steerer
... will find you out the morning after you land in Chicago or St.
Louis. He will accost you—very friendly, wonderful friendly—when
you come out of your hotel, by your name, and he will remind
you—which is most surprising, considerin’ you never set eyes on his
face before—how you have dined together in Cincinnati, or it may be
Orleans, or perhaps Francisco, because he finds out where you came
from last; and he will shake hands with you; and he will propose a
drink; and he will pay for that drink; and presently he will take
you somewhere else, among his pals, and he will strip you so clean,
that there won’t be left the price of a four-cent paper to throw
around your face and hide your blushes. In London ... they do the
confidence trick.
1888. Daily Inter-Ocean, Feb. 14. Andrew Carnegie fell into the
hands of a bunco-steerer in Pittsburg, Saturday night, but was
rescued by a detective before he lost anything.
Bundle, verb (old).—To practise bundling (q.v.).
1781. S. Peters, Gen. Hist. Connecticut. It is thought but a piece
of civility to ask [a lady] to bundle.
1797. Sewell. Queeston is an odd way of wooing usual in some sea
towns or Isles of Holland, after this manner. When the wench is
gone to bed, the fellow enters the room and lays himself down in
his clothes upon the blankets, next unto her, with one window of
the room open, and thus he talks with her, very innocently—as it is
reported.
1809. W. Irving, Knickerbocker History of New York. Van Corlear
stopped occasionally in the villages to ... dance at country
frolics, and bundle with the Yankee lasses.
1871. Schele De Vere, Americanisms, p. 448. To bundle, a custom
still prevalent in Wales, and not unfrequently practised in the
West, of men and women sleeping with all their clothes on, when
there is not house-room to provide better accommodation.
Bundling or Bundling Up, subs. (old).—A custom now obsolete, but
formerly in vogue where bed accommodation was scarce, of men and women
sleeping on the same bed together without having removed their clothes.
The practice is mentioned by Wright as having been customary in Wales,
and it will be remembered that Washington Irving alludes to it in his
Knickerbocker History of New York. Whatever may have been the case in
former times, it does not appear to be a habit either in the Mother
Country or the New World at the present day, even in the districts most
remote from civilization. No question of immodesty seems to have
attached to the custom; indeed, attempts were made to prove that
bundling was very right and proper. On this point, however, opinions
will vary considerably. Also used in verbal form to bundle. Cf., Caulk.
1809. W. Irving, Knickerbocker History of New York. Among other
hideous customs they [the Yankees] attempted to introduce that of
bundling, which the Dutch lasses of the Nederlandts, with their
eager passion for novelty and for the fashions, natural to their
sex, seemed very well inclined to follow, but that their mothers,
being more experienced in the world and better acquainted with men
and things, discountenanced all such outlandish innovations.