also shove- (or shovel-) board, shove-groat, slide-groat, slide-thrift, or push-penny, subs. phr.—A gambling game, played on a table on which transverse lines have been drawn rather more than the width of a halfpenny apart. The play consists in sending a halfpenny by a smart stroke of the palm from the end of the table so as to make it rest in the compartments formed by the lines. [Ed. VI. shillings, as being smooth and easily pushed, were much in vogue as counters.]

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  1528.  STANYHURST, Chronicle of Ireland. When the lieutenant and he for their desporte were plaieing at SLIDEGROTE or SHOOFLEBOARD.

2

  1598.  JONSON, Every Man in his Humour, iii. 2. Made it run as smooth off the tongue as a SHOVE-GROAT shilling.

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  1598.  SHAKESPEARE, 2 Henry IV., ii. 4, 206. Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a SHOVE-GROAT shilling.

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  1630.  TAYLOR (‘The Water Poet’), Travels of Twelvepence [NARES].

        With me [a shilling of Ed. VI.] the unthrifts every day,
With my face downward, do at SHOVEBOARD play.

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  1801.  J. STRUTT, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, 16. The game of SHOVELBOARD, though now considered as exceedingly vulgar, and practised by the lower classes of the people, was formerly in great repute amongst the nobility and gentry; and few of their mansions were without a SHOVELBOARD.

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  1841.  Punch, I. 232. The favourite game of SHOVE-HALFPENNY was kept up till a late hour, when the party broke up highly delighted.

7

  1851–61.  H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, i. 14. SHOVE-HALFPENNY is another game played by them [costermongers].

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