[Ads-l] From the 1736 monde d=?UTF-8?Q?=C3=A9mod=C3=A9e_?=of card-sharping

[Joel Berson]

I did not include "puff" because it seemed an uninteresting interdating.


OED "puff', n., sense 8.b. slang. A person employed as a decoy in a gambling house. Also: a dummy bidder at an auction; = puffer n. 4b. Obs.  Earliest quotation:

1722   St. James Post 8–10 Jan. 1090   A Puff, one who has Money given him to Play, in order to decoy others.
-----
Akin to 8.c, A person who writes or utters puffs (sense  A. 6b); = puffer n. 4a. Obs.  Earliest quotation:


1730   H. Fielding Author's Farce ii. ii. 18   Some of it was given to Puffs, to cry up our new Plays—And one half Guinea to Mr. Scribler for a Panegyrical Essay in the News-Paper.

["Puff" for the person may be obsolete, but "puffers" are omnipresent, especially in election years.]


Joel

      From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com>
 To: Joel Berson <berson at att.net> 
 Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2016 5:24 PM
 Subject: Re: From the 1736 monde démodée of card-sharping
   

On Sun, Apr 17, 2016 at 2:04 PM, Joel Berson <berson at att.net> wrote:

the Puffs

Who/what were they? A.k.a "the swells"?


-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain




------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org