Tick

To go on tick—on ticket. In the seventeenth century, ticket was the ordinary term for the written acknowledgment of a debt, and one living on credit was said to be living on tick. Betting was then, and still is to a great extent, a matter of tick—i.e. entry of particulars in a betting-book. We have an Act of Parliament prohibiting the use of betting tickets: “Be it enacted, that if any person shall play at any of the said games … (otherwise than with and for ready money), or shall bet on the sides of such as shall play … a sum of money exceeding £100 at any one time … upon ticket or credit … he shall,” etc. (16 Car. II. cap. 16.)

“If a servant usually buy for the master upon tick, and the servant buy some things without the master’s order … the master is liable.”—Chief Justice Holt (Blackstone, chap. xv. p. 468).

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.