vbl. sb. [f. BOOK v. + -ING1.]
† 1. The action of making into a book. Obs.
1643. Herle, Answ. Ferne, 1. What hath bin all this while a booking.
2. The action of entering in a book, esp. in order to engage a seat or place; also the issuing of tickets, entitling to the same.
1884. Pall Mall Gaz., 5 Aug., 7/2. The number of bookings was much larger than … last year.
1884. Daily News, 9 April, 5/3. The old second-class fares were retained … for first-class bookings.
3. Sc. Law. A tenure peculiar to the burgh of Paisley, whereby the proprietors held their lands under the magistrates, the conveyance being entered or ‘booked’ in the Burgh Register. (Abolished by ‘The Conveyancing (Scotland) Act, 1874’).
1868. Act 31–2 Vict., ci. § 152. Lands in the burgh of Paisley, held by the peculiar tenure of booking.
4. Comb. booking-clerk, the clerk or official who books passengers or goods for a conveyance, or who sells tickets at a booking-office; booking-office, an office where places may be booked for a coach or other conveyance, or where goods may be booked for transit; also the place where tickets are sold at a railway or steam-boat station.
1836–7. Dickens, Sk. Boz (1850), 79/2. Sally forth to the booking-office to secure your place. Ibid., 80/1. You wonder what on earth the booking-office clerks can have been before they were booking-office clerks.
1881. R. G. White, Eng. Without & Within, iii. 60. At the ‘booking-office’ no booking is done…. But as there were booking offices for the stage-coaches which used to run between all the towns … of England, the term had become fixed in the minds, and upon the lips of this nation of travellers.
