Page:Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant (1889) by Barrere & Leland.djvu/150

 minds of the coiners of this irreverent expression. "Will you be old bitch?" means "Will you make tea?"

Biter (old), a woman of inordinate sexual desires.

Bite the ear, to (prison slang), to borrow. "I bit his ear for three and a sprat"—I borrowed 3s. 6d. of him.

Bite the roger, to (thieves), to steal a portmanteau.

Bite the wiper, to (thieves), to steal a pocket-handkerchief.

Bite, to (common), to take in, impose on, cheat, over-reach in any way. Hotten says this is a gypsy term, but does not prove it. "Cross-bite, for a cheat, constantly occurs in the writers of the sixteenth century. Bailey has cross-bite, a disappointment, probably the primary sense, and bite is very probably a contraction of this." It is much more probably derived from the Dutch buiten, which in slang means, according to Teirlinck, to buy, or trade, and which is more accurately defined by Gherard van der Scheuren (Teuthonista oft Duytslender, 1475-77) as "Buyten, wesselen mangeln, cuyden; tuyschen-cambire, permutare," &c. These words all mean to trade, exchange, or barter; but tuyschen indicates cheating, or swindling; combining the force of the analogous German words tauschen, to exchange or trade, and täuschen, to deceive. Hotten also says that bite is a north country word for a hard bargain (used by Pope), and that Swift tells us that it originated with a nobleman in his day. According to Sewel's Dictionary, buit is booty, spoil, pillage; buiten, among other meanings, has "to go out to pillage," and "zich te buyten gaan" (i.e., to go out, or away, or too far) is "to be exorbitant." When we remember that byten means in Dutch to bite, and buyten (which has almost the same pronunciation) to bargain with all the associations of deceit and plunder, it seems much more probable that bite, a hard bargain, or bite, to cheat, came from the Low Countries direct, than from an English word signifying "disappointment."—C. G. L.

Bite was formerly used as an interjection equivalent to the modern expression "sold!" There is a story of a man sentenced to the gallows who sold his body to a surgeon. ...

It is a superstition with some surgeons who beg the bodies of condemned malefactors, to go to the gaol and bargain for the carcass with the criminal himself. ... The fellow who killed the officer of Newgate, very forwardly, and like a man who was willing to deal, told him, "Look you, Mr. Surgeon, that little dry fellow, who has been half-starved all his life, and is now half-dead with fear, cannot answer your purpose. ... Come, for twenty shillings I am your man." Says the surgeon, "Done, there's a guinea." This witty rogue took the money, and as soon