Partnership.
1834. (Feb.) I will splice the member from North Carolina to you, and for a short time will consider you in cahoot.—Speech of S. S. Prentiss, Shields, ‘Life of Prentiss,’ (1884), p. 239. (Italics in the original.)
1839. I feel a freedom in talking to you; and in order to have a full and ample case, I will splice the member from North Carolina to you, and for a short time will consider you one person, or in cahoot.—Mr. Duncan of Ohio in the House of Representatives: Congressional Globe, March 4, p. 211.
[From the latter quotation it seems doubtful whether Mr. Prentiss said the same thing five years earlier.]
1845. Pete Hopkins aint no better nor he should be, and I wouldn’t swar he wasn’t in cahoot with ’em!—W. T. Thompson, ‘Chronicles of Pineville,’ p. 74 (Phila.). (incorrectly quoted, Bartlett).
1846. Who wants a parcel of low-flung outside barbarians to go in cahoot with us?—Oregon Spectator, May 28. (Given as a specimen of stump oratory.)
1851. If … I could only get the township and range, I’d make a cahoot business with old man Doublejoy.—J. J. Hooper, ‘Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs,’ &c., p. 37 (Phila.).
1852. A resident of Florida supplies the following local terms:—A cracker has just lighted at my office, and informed me that a neighbor who was in cahoot with him had honey-fackled him in the matter of a heap of logs which they had been getting out on a quarter (40 ac.) about a look from a branch near the old field on the Fatio grant.—Knickerbocker Mag., xl. 548 (Dec.).
1857. They all agree to cahoot with their claims against Nicaragua and Costa Rica.—N.Y. Herald, May 20 (Bartlett).
1881. It is an open secret that [Sargent, of California] has long been in “cahoot” with ex-Governor Shepherd.—Philadelphia Record, Feb. 8.
1888. Seibert and Noland are in cahoots. Seibert’s friends will support Noland, and Noland’s friends will support Seibert.—Washington Post, n.d. (Farmer).
1892. You are trying to get me to go in cahoot with you, and share your spoils.—W. N. Harben, ‘A Mute Confessor,’ p. 153 (Boston).
