arch. Also 6–7 -dogen, -dogeon. [app. f. CLAPPER sb. + DUNGEON hilt of a dagger: the origin of the appellation is unknown. Collier suggests ‘from his knocking the clapdish he carried with a dudgeon.’]
A cant name for a beggar born; also used as a term of reproach or insult (cf. beggar).
1567. Harman, Caveat, 44. These Palliards be called also Clapperdogens.
1599. George a Greene (1861), 265. It is but the part of a clapperdudgeon to strike a man in the street.
1624. Bp. Mountagu, Gagg, Pref. 17. They and their trulls may meet at their stawling kenns with such claperdogeons as yourselfe.
1728. [De Foe], Street-Robberies Consider’d, 31. Clapper Dudgeon, a Beggar born.
1834. H. Ainsworth, Rookwood, II. v. (1878), 198. No swigman, swaddler, clapper-dudgeon.
1863. Sala, Capt. Dang., II. vii. 225. Rogues, Thieves … and Clapper-dudgeons … infested the outskirts of the Old Palace.
