Antedatings and new sense of "cut the stick"

[Hugo]

"cut the stick", to depart (OED: 1825)

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Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1823, page 107 --
but not in the 1788 or 1796 editions) by Pierce Egan simply says:

[Begin]
CUT ONE'S STICK. To be off. Cant.
[End]

https://archive.org/stream/grosesclassical00grosgoog#page/n107/mode/1up
https://archive.org/details/grosesclassical00grosgoog

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Further antedatings can be found in Othello-travestie: In Three Acts,
with Burlesque Notes in the Manner of the Most Celebrated Commentators
and Other Curious Appendices by John Poole ("and William Shakespeare")
(page 8):

[Begin]
Roderigo.

Why not cut your stick ? (b)
[End]

And page 29 just before Cassio leaves:

[Begin]
Cassio.

I'll cut my stick.
[End]

Also in the extensive footnotes from pages 60 to 62 by "Johnson",
"Theobald", "Warburton" and "Steevens", which I won't quote but you
can see here:

http://english.stackexchange.com/a/146139/9001
https://archive.org/details/othellotravestie00poolrich
https://archive.org/stream/grosesclassical00grosgoog#page/n107/mode/1up

Given the subtitle of the book -- "with Burlesque Notes in the Manner
of the Most Celebrated Commentators" -- I don't think we can trust
them to be real, and therefore the last 1597 is likely fictional, but
they are clear 1813 examples of "to leave".

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https://archive.org/stream/grosesclassical00grosgoog#page/n107/mode/1up
https://archive.org/details/grosesclassical00grosgoog

The same meaning is found in the US, but also another sense of "to die".

Maximilian Schele de Vere's Americanisms; the English of the New World
(1872) says on page 594:

[Begin]
To cut one's sticky used in England instead of to leave, has been
enlarged in its meaning by American vigor of speech, and here often
means to die. " I'm blowed if he cut stick" (N. Hawthorne.)
[End]

https://archive.org/stream/americanismsengl00scheuoft#page/594/mode/1up
https://archive.org/details/americanismsengl00scheuoft

I'm not sure where the N[athaniel?] Hawthorne quotation comes from.

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Hugo

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