verb (thieves’).—1. Specifically, to sell flashy goods as pretended contraband or stolen; hence to cheat. DUFFERS, or MEN AT THE DUFF = pedlars of flash. (Cf., DUDDER). DUFFING = the practice; used as an adjective = spurious.
1781. G. PARKER, A View of Society, II., 158. ‘The DUFF’ [smuggled goods, so named and described in].
1811. GROSE and CLARKE, Lexicon Balatronicum. DUFFERS. Cheats who … pretend to deal in smuggled goods, stopping all country people, or such as they think they can impose on; which they frequently do, by selling them Spital-fields goods at double their current price.
1851–61. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. II., p. 23. They have been regularly ‘DUFFED’ out of the streets, so much cheap rubbish is made to sell.
1888. G. R. SIMS, in Cassell’s Saturday Journal, 31 March, p. 7. The MAN AT THE DUFF palms off false jewellery as real.
2. (common).—To rub up the nap of old clothes so as to make them look almost as good as new. DUFFER = one who performs this operation, whilst the article operated upon is also a DUFFER by virtue of the fact itself. Cf., DUFFER.
