TO RECEIVE THE CANVASS, phr. (old).—A seventeenth-century colloquialism for ‘to be dismissed’; in modern slang ‘to get the sack.’—See BAG, sense 2, and SACK.

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  1652.  SHIRLEY, The Brothers, ii. 1.

        As much as marriage comes to, and I lose
My honour, if my don RECEIVE THE CANVAS.

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