sb. colloq. Also jarvy, jarvie. [By-form of Jarvis or Jervis, personal name.]
1. A hackney-coachman. Now frequently applied to the driver of an Irish car.
[1796. Grose, Dict. Vulg. T., Jarvis, a hackney coachman.
1812. J. H. Vaux, Flash Dict., Jervis’s upper benjamin, a box, or coachman’s great coat.]
1820. Blackw. Mag., VI. 391. To see him through the jar of jarvies pushing.
1862. Sala, Accepted Addr., 184. I seek in vain for the old jarvey with his many-caped Benjamin.
1882. Serjt. Ballantine, Exper., I. ii. 24. The driver [of a hackney-coach] was called a jarvey, a compliment paid to the class in consequence of one of them named Jarvis having been hanged.
† 2. A hackney-coach. Obs.
1819. Blackw. Mag., V. 639/2. He had a large loaf stuck upon the pole of the Jarvie in which he travelled.
1841. Motley, Corr. (1889), I. iv. 76. The droskies, the most awkward and inconvenient of all jarvies.
1868. H. C. R. Johnson, Argent. Alps, 163. A most wonderful and antique coach, something like an enormous ghost of one of the London jarveys of fifty years ago.
Hence Jarvey v. intr., to act the jarvey, to drive a carriage.
1826. Sporting Mag., XIX. 18. No one can pronounce that person a ‘good whip’ who has only been seen jarveying along a turnpike level road.
