or four-and-ninepenny, subs. phr. (old).—A hat. [So-called from the price at which an enterprising Bread Street hatter sold his hats, circa 1844, at which date London was hideous with posters displaying a large black hat and ‘4s. and 9d.’ in white letters.]

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  1844.  Advertisement Couplet.

        Whene’er to slumber you incline,
Take a short nap at FOUR-AND-NINE.

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  1846.  THACKERAY, The Yellowplush Papers, p. 152 (ed. 1887). You may, for instans, call a coronet a coronal (an ‘ancestral coronal,’ p. 74), if you like, as you might call a hat a ‘swart sombrero,’ ‘a glossy FOUR-AND-NINE,’ ‘a silken helm, to storm impermeable, and lightsome as the breezy gossamer’; but, in the long run, it’s as well to call it a hat.

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  1847.  THACKERAY, Mrs. Perkins’s Ball (The Mulligan). The Mulligan has withdrawn his custom from the ‘infernal FOUR-AND-NINEPENNY scoundthrel,’ as he calls him. The hatter has not shut up shop in consequence.

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  1849.  VIATOR, Oxford Guide. He then did raise his FOUR-AND-NINE, And scratched his shaggy pate.

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  1867.  GREENWOOD, Unsentimental Journeys, xxx., 229. Because he wore a FOUR-AND-NINE, and had a pencil stuck behind his ear.

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