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Cabbage (To)

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To filch. Sometimes a tailor is calledcabbage,” from his pilfering cloth given him to make up. Thus in Motteux’s Rabelais, iv. 52, we read of “Poor Cabbage’s hair.” (Old French, cabas, theft, verb cabasser; Dutch, kabassen; Swedish, grabba; Danish, griber, our grab.)

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“Your tailor, instead of shreds, cabbages whole yards of cloth.”—Arbuthnot’s John Bull.

Cabbage is also a common schoolboy term for a literary crib, or other petty theft.

 

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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.

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C
Ca Ira (it will go)
Caaba
Cab
Cabal
Cabala
Cabalist
Cabalistic
Caballero
Cabbage
Cabbage (To)
Cabinet Ministers
Cabiri
Cable’s Length
Cabochon (En)
Cachecope Bell
Cachet (pron. cahshay)
Cacodæmon
Cacoethes (Greek)
Cacus
Cad