Bilk
. To cheat, to obtain goods and decamp without paying for them.
“The landlord explained it by saying that ‘a bilkʹ is a man who never misses a meal and never pays a cent.”—A. K. McClure: Rocky Mountains letter xxii. p. 211.
⁂ To “bilk” in cribbage is to spoil your adversariesʹ score; to balk him. Perhaps the two words are mere variants.
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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.