chuck-a-luck (1830, 1831)

[Jonathan Lighter]

These antedate OED's 1836.

  1830 _Baltimore Patriot_  (Feb. 20) 2: Michael Miller was lately fined by the court of Fayette county, Ken., in the sum of $500, for gambling at _Chuck-a-luck_....We know not what kind of game is meant by _chuckaluck_ [sic], but the _luck_ attending to it seems to accord well with that of the more famed species of gambling, and of gamblers generally.

  1831 in _American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine_ (Apr. 1832) 427: Col. Bingaman's gr. f. Madge Wildfire; by Mercury; dam Chuckaluck; three years old.

  (The race described took place in Adams Co., Miss., Dec. 28, 1831.)

  JL


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