or nubbling-chit, subs. (old cant).—The gallows, whence NUBBING = a hanging; NUBBING-COVE = the hangman; and NUBBING-KEN = the Sessions House.—B. E. (c. 1696); A New Canting Dictionary (1725); GROSE (1785).
ENGLISH SYNONYMS. Abraham’s balsam (in botany = a species of willow); Beilby’s ballroom; Chates (chattes or chats); City stage (formerly in front of Newgate); crap; deadly never-green; derrick; forks; government sign-post; hanging-cheat; horse foaled by an acorn; hotel door-posts; the ladder; leafless-tree; mare with three legs; Moll Blood (old Scots’); morning-drop; prop (Punch and Judy); the queer-’em (queer-’un queer-’um); scrag; scrag-squeezer; sheriff’s picture-frame; squeezer; stalk (Punch and Judy); the stifler; the swing; three-legged mare; three trees; topping cheat; Tower-hill vinegar (the swordsman’s block); tree that bears fruit all the year round; tree with three corners; treyning-cheat; triple-tree; Tuck’em Fair; Tyburn cross; widow; wooden-legged mare.
FRENCH SYNONYMS. L’abbaye de Monte-à-regret (= Mount Sorrowful Church: also l’abbaye de Monte-à-rebours, and l’abbaye de Saint-Pierre = cinq pierres, the five flag-stones in front of La Roquette); la bascule; le béquille (= crutch); la béquillarde; la butte-à-regret (= Heavy-Arse-Hill); les deux mâts, or le haut mât (old); l’êschelle (= LADDER, q.v.); la fenetre (in allusion to the aperture into which falls the knife); le géant; la jambe; la louisette (old); la lune à douze quartiers (= the wheel on which criminals were broken); la lunette d’approche (specifically, the knife); la Marianne; la mécanique; la mére, or la mére au bleu: le monde renversé; le Monte-à-regret (= Mount Sorrowful: also monte-à-rebours); la passe; le rasoir national (so named in ’93: also le rasoir à Roch, or de la Cigogne—Roche = a one-time executioner, and la Cigogne = the Préfecture of Police); la sans-feuille (= the LEAFLESS TREE, q.v.); la veuve (= the WIDOW, q.v.); la voyante.
1712. The Black Procession [FARMER, Musa Pedestris (1836), 37]. Up to the NUBBING CHEAT where they are nubb’d.
1714. Memoirs of John Hall (4 ed.), p. 13, s.v.
1749. FIELDING, Tom Jones, xii. NUBBING CHEAT, cries Partridge, pray, sir, what is that? Why that, sir, said the stranger, is a cant phrase for the gallows.
c. 1812. MAHER, The Death of Socrates [FARMER, Musa Pedestris (1896), 81].
| When he came to the NUBBING-CHEAT, | |
| He was tack’d up so neat and so pretty. |
1821. MARTIN and AYTOUN (‘Bon Gualtier’), in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, viii. 223. The faking boy to the crap has gone, at the NUBBLING-CHIT you’ll find him.
1834. W. H. AINSWORTH, Rookwood (ed. 1864), 313. I fear Dick will scarce cheat the NUBBING-CHEAT this go. His time’s up, I calculate.
