Citations:chowsing

English citations of chowsing

Verb: "cheating, swindling"

				1792	1822 1869
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1792, John Croft, editor, Scrapeana: fugitive miscellany, Sans Souci [London]: [s.n.], →OCLC, page 14:

  […] in his discourse on the heinous sins of chowsing, cheating, and defrauding one's neighbours, […]

• 1822, Samuel Butler, edited by Robert Thyer, The genuine remains of Samuel Butler, new, corrected and enlarged edition, volume 1, London: C. Baldwyn, →OCLC, page 281:

  All feats of arms are now reduc'd
  To chowsing, or to being chows'd,
  And no rencounters so renown'd
  As those on walls and underground.

• 1869 May, An old Tory (pseud.), “Self government in Ireland”, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine‎^[1], volume 105, number 643, London: William Blackwood, →ISSN, page 636:

  […] we entirely condemn and object to Mr Lowe's device for chowsing us out of a quarter's payment, by the juggle of shifting the period in which our returns are to be made up […]