Pass-word. Slender in The Merry Wives of Windsor, says—
“We have a nay-word how to know each other I come to her in white and cry Mum, she cries Budget, and by that we know one another.”—Shakespeare.
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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.