subs. (old).—See quot. 1755.
1733. SWIFT, Miscellanies, ‘A Soldier and a Scholar.’
| I am grown a mere MOPUS, no Company comes, | |
| But a Rabble of Tenants, and rusty dull Rums. |
1755. JOHNSON, A Dictionary of the English Language (1814), s.v. MOPUS. … a cant word from ‘mope.’ A drone, a dreamer.
2. (common).—A small coin. [Said to be a corruption of the name of Sir Giles Mompesson, a monopolist notorious in the reign of James I.]
c. 1696. B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, s.v.
1841. Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, viii. 222. ‘My Mother.’
| Who’d watch me sleeping in my chair, | |
| And Slily to my fob repair, | |
| And leave me not a MOPUS there? | |
| My mother. |
3. In pl. (MOPUSSES).—Money.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v.
1811. GROSE and CLARKE, Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v. MOPUSSES. Money.
1824. P. EGAN, Boxiana, iv. 443. Ned not having the MOPUSSES to spare.
1834. W. H. AINSWORTH, Rookwood, I. ix. p. 55. Then whose inclinations are so uncontrolled as the highwayman’s, so long as the MOPUSES last?
1842. Punch, ‘Prolusiones Etymologicæ,’ p. 168.
| He that has the MOPUSSES | |
| May buy diamonds and topazes. |
1844. C. SELBY, London by Night, ii. 1. Ned. I see an improvement in the financial position—lucky, like myself. Jack. (Aside.) Lots of MOPUSSES.
1859. G. W. MATSELL, Vocabulum; or, The Rogue’s Lexicon, s.v.
1883. Punch, 3 Nov., p. 210, col. 1. But what’s that to us, so ’s we pull in the ‘MOPUSSES.’
