Also 6 Sc. tikket, -ett, tek-, ticet, tikk-, tykkatt, tik-, tek-, tecat, 6–7 Sc. tiket, 6–8 tickett, 7 tik-, tyckett, tiquet, Sc. tickket. [In 16th c. (1528) tiket, aphetic form of *etiket, a. obs. F. etiquet ‘a little note, breuiate, bill, or ticket; especially such a one, as is stucke vp on the gate of a Court, signifying the seisure &c of an inheritance by order of justice’; or the parallel F. étiquette ‘a ticket fastened within the mouth of a Lawyers booke bag, and containing the titles of the bookes, [etc.]; any inscription, superscription, title, note, or marke set on th’outside of a thing…; also, a token, billet, or ticket, deliuered for the benefit, or aduantage of him that receiues it’ (Cotgr.):—OF. estiquet(te (1387 in Hatz.-Darm.), f. estiquer, to stick, fix, from Teutonic; ad. OLG. stek-an = OHG. stehhan, Ger. stechen to stick, fix. The primary sense was ‘a little note or notice affixed to anything, a label,’ whence extended as in Cotgrave, and in the senses below. It is notable that our earliest instances are Irish and Scotch; but English examples in some senses appear c. 1600. See also ETIQUETTE, repr. a later sense of the Fr. word.]
1. A short written notice or document; a memorandum, a note, a billet. † In ticket, in writing (Sc.). Obs. exc. as in b, c.
This general sense is present in nearly all those that follow, which differ mainly in respect of the purpose or use to which the written statement or note is put.
1528. in 10th Rep. Hist. MSS. Comm., App. V. 403. The Bailiefe shall not priese no flesh … unlesse he can get a tiket or bill of the merchanndes hand with the boucher to whom he had sold the same.
1589. Reg. Privy Council Scot., IV. 395. To present thair desiris in tikkatt to the Lordis compositouris.
c. 1600. Jas. VI., in 3rd Rep. Hist. MSS. Comm., 396/2. Sicc soumis as the Duike of Lenox hes in tickket.
1622. Malynes, Anc. Law-Merch., 411. The Bankers … haue a meeting, and by certaine tickets in writing euerie man doth deliuer his opinion, what the price of Exchange ought to be.
1627. Ussher, Lett. (1686), 374. The Bishop of Derry hath left with me his Ticket, wherein he undertakes to pay 50£ unto any one of the Captains to whom your Lordship shall appoint.
1638. Baker, trans. Balzac’s Lett. (vol. II.), 157. If your ticket had overtaken me at Orleans, I had certainly returned to Paris.
1661. Pepys, Diary, 12 April. While I am now writing, comes one with a tickett to invite me to Captain Robert Blake’s buriall.
1755. in Hist. Rev. Pennsylvania (1759). Every one votes as he pleases, the election being by written tickets, folded up and put in a box.
1760. Hooper, in Priv. Lett. Ld. Malmesbury (1870), I. 82. A page delivered him a ticket, importing that something had happened to the (late) King.
b. spec. A written tender for ore, made by the smelter. Cf. TICKETING vbl. sb. 2. local.
1778. Pryce, Min. Cornub., 287. The highest bidder or ticket should be the purchaser.
a. 1856. Paris, in Jago, Cornw. Gloss. (1882), 291. Those [agents] of various Companies … produce a sealed ticket of the price they will give for ore; and he whose ticket is highest, takes the ore.
1870. J. Percy, Metall. Lead, 496. Each Mine sends samples of its ore to the Smelters in various localities, along with a notice to the effect that tenders or tickets will be received up to a certain day, on which they will be opened and the highest offer accepted.
c. Stock Exch.: see quot. 1882–93.
1882–93. Bithell, Counting-Ho. Dict., s.v. Ticket Day, The day for the passing of tickets between brokers and jobbers, by means of which they learn the amount of stocks and shares they have respectively to deliver or receive on the day following.
1912. Stock Exchange Ticket, All rights in respect of this ticket are hereby claimed. Ibid., If this Ticket be divided, insert Number and name of party dividing it, or New Ticket will not be paid for.
2. A written notice for public information; formerly, a notice posted in a public place; a placard; now esp. a slip of cardboard, metal, paper, etc., attached to an object, and bearing its name, description, price, or the like; a label, show-card.
(This may have been the original sense.)
1567. Reg. Privy Council Scot., I. 504. At the occasioun of sum tikkettis affixt on the Tolbuyth dur of Edinburgh, be his lettre sent to hir Majestie, [he] had desyrit James Erll Bothwell, and certane specifiit in the saidis tikkettis, to be apprehendit.
a. 1661. Fuller, Worthies, Buckingham. (1662), I. 137. Giving notice of the time to his Auditours in a ticket on the School-dores.
1691–. [implied in TICKET v.1].
1766. in Westm. Gaz., 22 April (1910), 2/3. The seats in the House of Commons were begun to be taken for the members by pinning down a ticket with their names in such seats as they chose, which were reserved for them till prayers began.
1804. Aston’s Manch. Guide, 162. A ticket is affixed to each patient’s bed, mentioning his name, and that of his physician or surgeon; the time of admission, and the diet ordered for him.
1848. Thackeray, Van. Fair, xl. The ticket in the window which announced ‘Apartments to Let.’
1851. Mantell, Petrifact., iv. § 1. 365. The same coloured margin as that on the ticket ‘Quartz,’ surrounds every specimen of quartz in that Case.
3. (More fully visiting ticket.) A visiting-card. Now Obs. or dial.; also Anglo-Ind.
1673. [R. Leigh], Transp. Reh., 142. I shall only therefore leave a ticket for his assignes.
1773. Lady Mary Coke, Jrnl., 30 Nov. Sir Horatio Mann … has desired me to leave a ticket with the Grande Maitresse to-morrow.
1778. Mrs. Thrale, Lett. to Johnson, 11 Nov. Your visiting ticket has been left very completely in Wales. Was it the fashion to leave cards in Prior’s time?
1782. Miss Burney, Cecilia, I. iii. Why, a ticket is only a visiting card, with a name upon it; but we all call them tickets now.
1862. Thackeray, Philip, xiii. Poor dear Mrs. Jones … still calls on the ladies of your family and slips her husband’s ticket upon the hall table.
1900. C. Lee, Cynthia, ii. 20. Mr. Gibbs come in just now … and left his ticket over the chimley.
† 4. A writing in which something is certified or authorized; a certificate or voucher; a warrant, licence, permit. Also fig.
1529. Aberdeen Regr. (1844), I. 126. Conforme to the saidis maisteris of warkis tikatis.
1553. Exch. Rolls Scotl., XVIII. 377. Pas this rentell to the lard of Rawelloun … and kep this our tecat for your varrand.
a. 1592. Greene, Jas. IV., III. ii. I am the king’s purveyor … Here’s my ticket, deny it if thou darest.
1615. Nottingham Rec. (1889), IV. 334. The Schoole Wardens shall not hencefurth pay or doo any reparacions vpon the howse … without a tyckett for the same vnder Maister Maior’s hand.
1641. Evelyn, Diary, 28 Aug. He … then deliver’d me a ticket by virtue whereof I was made excise-free.
1675. V. Alsop, Anti-sozzo, 554. Paul would have past for a Righteous person upon his producing the Ticket of a blameless Conversation.
b. = CERTIFICATE sb. 3 b. slang.
c. 1900. Cutcliffe Hyne, Master of Fortune, iii. 56. I’m Captain of the whole of this show now, by your making, and I intend to be respected as such, and hold a full captain’s ticket.
5. A slip, usually of paper or cardboard, bearing the evidence of the holder’s title to some service or privilege, to which it admits him; as a theater-ticket, railway or tramway ticket, insurance-ticket, lottery-ticket, lecture-ticket, platform-ticket (at a meeting), communion-ticket, member’s ticket, luncheon-ticket, soup-ticket, etc.
1673. Galston Sess. Rec., in Edgar Old Ch. Life Scot. (1885), 173, note. Several hunders of tickets ar distribute.
1682. Luttrell, Brief Rel. (1857), I. 179. The parties were invited by tickets, of which any man might have one for a guiney, it being the price thereof.
1697–8, 1710. [see LOTTERY 5, 1].
1710. Hearne, Collect. (O.H.S.), iii. 40. The Tickett of a 1000 libs per annum for 32 Years.
1741. Wesley, Wks. (1872), I. 301. To those who were sufficiently recommended tickets were given.
a. 1845. Hood, Double Knock, 11. Sure he has brought me tickets for the play.
1878. F. S. Williams, Midl. Railw., 626. The printing of tickets is effected by an ingeniously constructed machine.
1898. Flor. Montgomery, Tony, 17. You have got your ticket quite safe, haven’t you?
1906. Macm. Mag., June, 625. Subscribers may obtain from the Society supplies of food-tickets, each representing two-pennyworth of food.
Mod. Admission only by ticket.
b. fig.
1713. Steele, Englishman, No. 21. 135. Your Approbation is the Ticket by which they gain Admittance into your Paper.
1784. Cowper, Task, III. 98. Well dressed, well bred, Well equipaged, is ticket good enough, To pass us readily through every door.
1852. Thackeray, Esmond, II. xi. Within a month after this day, Mr. Addison’s ticket had come up a prodigious prize in the lottery of life.
1864. Soc. Sc. Rev., I. 409. Men who have robbed employers, or in some other way sullied their fair fame (in cab language ‘lost the ticket’) but who have not been … prosecuted, easily become cabmen.
6. A pay-warrant; esp. a discharge warrant in which the amount of pay due to a soldier or sailor is certified.
1596. Spenser, State Irel., Wks. (Globe), 657/2. There should be a pay-master appoynted, of speciall trust, which should paye everye man according to his captaynes tickett, and the accompte of the clarke of his bande.
1665. Pepys, Diary, 5 Dec. Mr. Stevens, who is … paying of seamen of their tickets at Deptford.
1836. Marryat, Midsh. Easy, xl. Gascoigne, having received his discharge-ticket, went on board of the Rebiera.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., iii. I. 299. The sailors were paid with so little punctuality that they were glad to find some usurer who would purchase their tickets at forty per cent discount.
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, Ticket, Seaman’s, a register ticket given to seamen from the General Register and Record office of Seamen.
b. Short for TICKET OF LEAVE.
1904. A. Griffiths, 50 Years Public Service, xii. 169. Blue dress men of exemplary conduct, who were within a year of release on ticket. Ibid., xxiii. 354. Then he is on ticket now, and wanted for failing to report himself, no doubt.
† 7. An acknowledgement of indebtedness, an I O U; a promise to pay; a note or memorandum of money or goods received on credit; a debit account, a score; hence phr. on, upon (the) ticket, on credit, on trust. Cf. on tick (TICK sb.4 1).
Prob. the ‘ticket’ was orig. the ‘note of hand’ of the borrower, but it might easily be transferred to the statement of the same rendered by the creditor, and thus to ‘a tradesman’s bill,’ as suggested by Nares.
c. 1600. Day, Begg. Bednall Gr., I. i. Your poor Vitler, Sir, where your Lordships men went o’ th’ ticket.
1632. J. Hayward, trans. Biondi’s Eromena, 25. The Admirall lost some monies … and then playing on ticket, lost twenty thousand crownes.
a. 1634. Randolph, Hey for Honesty, II. vi. I am resolved to build no more Sconces, but to pay my old tickets.
1643. Davenant, Unfort. Lovers, V. i. Let ’em not deal on the Ticket. You know ready Mony makes the Pot boil.
1656. Heylin, Surv. France, 147. He that hath … his gold ready shall have a sooner dispatch, then the best Scholar upon ticket.
8. In U.S. politics, The list of candidates for election nominated or put forward by a party or faction.
General ticket, a list of candidates put forward for a state or other large political division, equal in number to the entire representation to which the division is entitled, but not chosen to represent each local subdivision. Mixed, scratch, split, straight ticket: see quot. 1859.
1711. Isaac Norris, in Penn-Logan Corr. (1872), II. 438. Chester [Pennsylvania] carried their ticket entire.
1764. (Nov. 3) in Life, etc., J. Reed (1847), I. 36. The Dutch Calvinists and the Presbyterians … to a man assisted the new ticket.
1766. Sarah Franklin, Lett. to B. Franklin (1859), 191. The old ticket forever! We have it by 34 votes!
1789. Maryland Jrnl., 2 Jan. (Thornton, Amer. Gloss.). The Federal Ticket recommends Mr. Daniel Carroll for the Sixth District; and the opposite Ticket … Mr. Abraham Faw.
1808. Aurora General Advertiser, 6 Oct., 2/1. The whole whig ticket above, of Baltimore city and county, has been carried by more than 5000 majority.
1859. Bartlett, Dict. Amer., s.v., According to circumstances a man is said to vote the straight ticket, i.e. the ticket containing the ‘regular nomination’ of his party without change; a scratch ticket, a ticket from which the names of one or more of the candidates are erased; a split ticket, a ticket representing different divisions of his party; or a mixed ticket, a ticket in which the nominations of different parties are blended into one.
1861. Blair, in Century Mag. (1889), Sept., 687/2. Chase, who never voted a Democratic ticket in his life.
1888. Bryce, Amer. Commw., I. v. 54. Each party runs its list or ‘ticket’ of thirty presidential electors for that State.
9. slang. a. The correct thing; what is wanted, expected, or fashionable; esp. in phr. that’s the ticket.
Perh. from 8; or, as some have suggested, from the winning ticket in a lottery.
1838. Haliburton, Clockm., Ser. II. xxi. 323. They ought to be hanged, sir, (that’s the ticket, and he’d whop the leader).
1843. E. FitzGerald, Lett. (1889), I. 117. I fancy that moderately high hills (like these) are the ticket. Ibid. (1847), 179. This [idealizing of portraits] is all wrong. Truth is the ticket.
1854. Thackeray, Newcomes, vii. Somehow she’s not—she’s not the ticket.
1866. Routledge’s Ev. Boy’s Ann., 411. That’s the ticket! That’s the winning game.
b. The program or plan of action; that which is to be done; the thing on hand.
1842. Marryat, Perc. Keene, xiii. ‘Well,’ said Bob Cross, ‘what’s the ticket, youngster—are you to go abroad with me?’
1861. C. J. Andersson, Okavango River, x. 127. [The lion] suddenly squatted, evidently intending to spring upon me. ‘Nay, old fellow,’ I muttered to myself, ‘if that’s the ticket, I will be even with you.’
10. attrib. and Comb. a. simple attrib., as ticket-box, -pocket, -punch, -system, -tax; b. ‘having to do with the selling, etc. of tickets,’ as ticket-agent, -clerk, -guard, -man, -money, -office, -official, -room; c. ‘to which admission is obtained by ticket,’ as ticket-gathering, -meeting; d. obj. and objective genitive, as ticket-buyer, -clipper, -collector, -examiner, -receiver, -snipper; ticket-clipping, -collecting, -issuing, -punching, -snatching, -writing.
1824. T. Chalmers, in Mem. (1851), III. iii. 37. The ticket system operates admirably.
1848–9. Calhoun, Const. U.S., Wks. 1863, I. 370. The general ticket system; which has become … the universal mode of appointing electors to choose the President and Vice-President.
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, Ticket-writer, one who writes or paints showy placards and legible tickets for goods in shop windows.
1872. O. W. Holmes, Poet Breakf.-t., vi. Toll-men and ticket-takers.
1878. F. S. Williams, Midl. Railw., 628. The walls of the booking office are provided with ticket-boxes or tubes.
1884. Law Times, 23 Aug., 301/1. He presented a ticket at the barrier … saying to the ticket-clipper, ‘I want the train for Canonbury.’
1889. Spectator, 9 Nov., 634/1. A quasi-public or ticket meeting.
1890. Daily News, 22 Sept., 2/6. Wire-plyers and pincers, ticket-nippers, wrenches, spanners, &c.
1893. Gunter, Miss Dividends, 30. The ticket puncher looks astonished for a moment, and then … cries, ‘Next!’
1895. Westm. Gaz., 10 Oct., 3/1. After the exhausting and exciting struggle in the ticket-room comes the preparation for the settling or pay day.
1897. Pall Mall Mag., July, 384. He put the coin carefully in the ticket-pocket of his overcoat.
1897. Daily News, 6 July, 7/3. The minutes consumed in the stoppage for ticket-collecting.
1908. Westm. Gaz., 9 May, 2/3. In full view of that stern and uncompromising ticket-inspector.
11. Special Combs.: ticket benefit, an entertainment for which special tickets are sold, the proceeds being for the benefit of a particular person or object; ticket broker (U.S.), a dealer in unexpired or return railway tickets: = ticket-scalper; ticket-chopper (U.S.), (a) a machine that mutilates used railway tickets deposited in it by passengers; (b) the employee in charge of this machine; ticket-day: see quot. 1858; ticket-holder, (a) one who holds a ticket of admission, etc.; (b) a clip or other device for holding or attaching a ticket or label; † ticket-jobber, a jobber of lottery-tickets; ticket-man, (a) a ticket-holder; spec. a seaman who held a certificate exempting him from impressment (now Hist.); (b) a railway employee who collects or punches tickets; † ticket-monger, one who trafficked in the pay-warrants of seamen, giving ready money with a large deduction, and then presenting them for payment; ticket-night, a benefit performance: see quot. 1812; ticket-scalper (U.S. slang), one who buys and sells unexpired or return railway tickets at less than the rates at which they are issued; so ticket-scalping; ticket-shop, a shop displaying ticketed goods in the window. See also TICKET-PORTER.
1898. Daily News, 30 July, 2/4. The London Trades Council has arranged for a *ticket benefit … in aid of the Welsh Miners’ Relief Fund.
1902. Farmer & Henley, Slang Dict., s.v. Scalp, Ticket-scalper, a *ticket-broker.
1905. Daily Chron., 8 March, 5/4. One hundred students from Columbia University … volunteered their services to the company as guards and *ticket-choppers.
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, *Ticket-day, the day before the settling or pay-day on the Stock Exchange, when the names of bona-fide purchasers are rendered in by one stockbroker to another.
1901. Westm. Gaz., 12 Dec., 11/1. The business of ticket-days … is entirely clerical, consisting chiefly … of the passing of buyers’ names to sellers of stock or shares.
1877. Knight, Dict. Mech., *Ticket-holder, a device to hold a railway ticket in the hat or to the lappel of the coat; or a tag to a bale or package.
1737. Gentl. Mag., VII. 368/1. The Subscriptions being filled, whatever Reflections may be made, they can be of no Prejudice to the Lottery, but only affect the Ticket-Jobbers.
1803. Nelson, in Nicolas, Disp. (1845), V. 46. This ship is navigated to Portsmouth by *Ticket-men (men who are protected from the impress by some cause or other).
1893. Gunter, Miss Dividends, 37. Miss Travenion is conducted … past the ticket man at the gate, and on board the train.
1904. Westm. Gaz., 5 Feb., 10/1. Admission is by tickets, available for six nights, and … ‘ticket men’ get the first chance of entrance.
1668. Pepys, Diary, 5 March. To answer only one question, touching our paying tickets to *ticket-mongers.
1812. H. & J. Smith, Rej. Addr., xv. Some forth on *ticket-nights from tradesmen break, To mar the actor they design to make. [Note.] Ticket-nights are those whereon the inferior actors club for a benefit: each distributes as many tickets of admission as he is able among his friends.
1889. Farmer, Dict. Amer., *Ticket scalper, a speculator in unused railway tickets.
1892. Pall Mall G., 1 Nov., 2/1 (Farmer). *Ticket-scalping … has reference to the transferability or otherwise of tickets rather than to their date of expiry.
1851. Mayhew, Lond. Labour, I. 380/2. A thoroughfare full of *ticket-shops.
