Jockey v.

[f. prec. sb.]

  1.  trans. To play the jockey with (see prec. 3 b); to gain the advantage of by adroit management or trickery; to trick, outwit, overreach, take in, ‘do.’

1708.  Yorkshire-Racers, 3. And as you jockey’d us, we jockey’d you.

c. 1740.  A. Allen, MS. Dict., s.v., To jockey a Man, is to impose upon, to cheat, overreach; to deal w^th any one, as Jockeys usually doe w^th all y^e world. Nor is there any more deceitful race of Men than Jockeys, in their Sale of Horse flesh.

1785.  R. Cumberland, Observer, No. 96, ¶ 6. Let us see if any bishop shall jockey us with the like jade’s trick for the future.

1848.  Thackeray, Van. Fair, xxxiv. The way in which she jockied Jos, and which she described with infinite fun.

1865.  Dickens, Mut. Fr., II. iii. Whether the business in hand be to … promote a railway, or jockey a railway.

  b.  With adv. or prep. To get (out, in, away, etc.) by trickery; to cheat or do out of.

1719.  T. Gordon, Cordial Low Spirits, I. 117. They would at any time Jockey away a small Tenement in Abraham’s Bosom, for a rich Manor in England.

1772.  Town & Country Mag., 83. When he finds that I have jockied him out of his mistress.

1840.  Thackeray, Paris Sk.-bk., Caricatures. Penniless Directors,… jockeying their shares through the market. Ibid. (1855), Newcomes, xxxiii. When his Majesty, Louis XIV. jockeyed his grandson on to the throne of Spain.

1865.  Sat. Rev., 25 Feb., 217/2. Having been jockeyed into a miscarriage of justice.

  c.  To play tricks with; to manage or manipulate in a tricky way.

1890.  Nature, 16 Oct., 587. In Foucault’s pendulum a very slight jockeying can make the thing go as we wish.

1893.  Evid. Crt. Martial H.M.S. Victoria. Admiral Tryon disapproved of any jockeying the engines.

1894.  J. Knight, Garrick, vii. 104. Quin … had been controlled or jockeyed.

  d.  intr. To play the jockey, play tricks, act fraudulently; to aim at an advantage by adroit management or artifice.

a. 1835.  Comic song, ‘The Fox went out.’ He cut up the goose with a carving knife, And the little ones jockeyed for the bones, O!

1855.  Thackeray, Newcomes, lxii. An event for which she had been jockeying ever since she set eyes on young Newcome.

1899.  Daily News, 21 Oct., 3/4. When the preparatory gun was fired at 10hrs. 45mins. both yachts were jockeying under their mainsails, jibs, and staysails, the wind precluding the use of their club-topsails.

  2.  a. intr. To ride as a jockey (in quot. 1767 contemptuous). b. trans. To ride (a horse) in a race, as a jockey.

1767.  Anna Seward, Poems, etc. (1810), I. p. cxcvii. Sho reads no curtain-lectures upon his jockying over to Nottingham to read the news three times a week.

1825.  Sporting Mag., XVI. 273. Eclipse was then jockeyed by Sam Merrit.

1837.  [see JOCKEYING 2].