In sense 1, cribbage is known earlier than any recorded instance of CRIB sb. 16; but this is perh. only accidental.]
1. A game at cards, played by two, three, or four persons, with a complete pack of 52 cards, five (or six) of which are dealt to each player, and a board with sixty-one holes on which the points are scored by means of pegs; a characteristic feature being the ‘crib,’ consisting of cards thrown out from each player’s hand, and belonging to the dealer.
1630. Brathwait, Eng. Gentlem. (1641), 126. In games at Cards…; the Cribbage [requires] a recollected fancy.
1674. S. Vincent, Gallants Acad., 68. Such Ladies with whom you have plaid at Cribbidge.
1711. Puckle, Club, ¶ 123. Guess then the numbers of frauds there are at Picquet, Gleck … Basset, Cribbidge, and all the rest of the games upon the cards.
1768. Goldsm., Good-n. Man, III. i. Men that would go forty guineas on a game of cribbage.
1820. Hoyle’s Games Impr., 149. Mode of playing five-card cribbage…. Eight-card cribbage is sometimes played; but very seldom.
1840. Dickens, Old C. Shop, xxiii. He proposed a game of four-handed cribbage.
2. The action of ‘cribbing,’ or that which is ‘cribbed’; plagiarism. (colloq. rare.)
In first quot. with play on sense 1.
1830. Blackw. Mag., XXVII. 146. You think you are writing poetry, while you are only playing at cribbage. Ibid. (1852), LXXII. 681. The only tolerable parts of the book were palpable cribbages from poor Ruxton.
b. Something ‘cribbed’ or stolen.
1862. H. Marryat, Year in Sweden, II. 53–4. Gustaf Adolf IV. … signed his abdication on an inlaid table—a Thirty Years’ War cribbage—which stands under this very picture.
3. attrib. and Comb., as cribbage-card, -peg, -player, -table; cribbage-board, the board used for marking at cribbage; cribbage-faced a. (see quot.).
1755. Mrs. Delany, Let. Mrs. Dewes, 17 Nov. My brother is in great request at the cribbage-table.
1769. Mrs. Raffald, Eng. Housekpr. (1778), 205. To make Cribbage Cards in Flummery.
1785. Grose, Dict. Vulg. T., Cribbage-faced, marked with the small-pox, the pits bearing a kind of resemblance to the holes in a cribbage-board.
1810. Reformist, II. 104. That skinny cribbage-faced little devil in pink.
1821. Lamb, Elia, Old Benchers. [He] turned cribbage-boards, and such small cabinet toys, to perfection.
1824. Miss Mitford, Village, 1st Ser. (1863), 217. We cribbage-players are as well amused as they.
1839. 36 Years of Seafaring life, 149. Written in legible characters on his old cribbage face.
