verb (thieves’).—1. To erase the markings from a watch, and substitute a fictitious inscription, with a view to preventing identification. An old cant variant was TO CHURCH (q.v.), the derivation being analogous. French thieves, in speaking of a CHRISTENED watch or other ‘faked’ silver, use couvert.
1781. G. PARKER, A View of Society, II., 74. This alteration is called CHRISTENING, and the watch thus transformed faces the world without fear of detection.
1811. GROSE and CLARKE, Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v.
1857. SNOWDEN, Magistrates Assistant, 3 ed., p. 444. To alter the maker’s name in a watch—to CHRISTEN a yack.
1868. DORAN, Saints and Sinners, II., 290. The pietist thieves … ‘CHRISTEN’ daily as soon as they have stolen a watch. This thieves’ christening consists in erasing the maker’s name and supplying another. [M.]
1872. Standard, ‘Middlesex Sessions Report.’ William Miller, the detective officer in the case, being called upon by the judge to state what he knew of the prisoner, said he knew him by his trade as a baker, but he mixed up with watch thieves and housebreakers, and the tools found in his possession he used for CHRISTENING stolen watches and putting new bows to them.
2. (colloquial).—To mix water with wine; to mix liquors generally. Fr., Maquiller le vitriol = to adulterate brandy; monter sur le tonneau (vinters’ = to add water to a cask of wine). A Spanish equivalent is exactly translated bautizar el vino. TO DROWN THE MILLER (q.v.), = to add too much water.
1824. SCOTT, Redgauntlet, let. xiii. We’ll CHRISTEN him with the brewer (here he added a little small beer to his beverage).
3. (low).—To souse from a chamber utensil.
4. (common).—To take a dram; or ‘do a drain,’ in celebration of something, as the purchase of a new pair of boots, a removal, etc.
