Car tu n’as rien; ça fait rasoir.
Riche-en-gueule.
(Thieves’) Rasoir à Roch, or —— de la Cigogne, guillotine. M. Roch was formerly the executioner, and la Cigogne is the epithet applied to the Préfecture de Police. The knife of the guillotine was termed in ’93, “rasoir national.”
Raspail, m. (popular), brandy, “French cream,” and “bingo” in old English cant. Termed also “troix-six, fil-en-quatre, dur, raide, chenique, rude, crik, eau d’aff, schnapps, camphre, sacré chien, goutte, casse-poitrine, jaune, tord-boyaux, consolation, riquiqui, eau de mort.”
Rassembler (military), se faire ——, to get reprimanded or punished.
Rastacouère, or rastaquouère, foreign adventurer or swindler, generally hailing from the sunny south, or from South America, who lives in high style, of course at somebody or other’s expense.
La petite Raymonde D..., sa chère adorée, qu’on avait surnommée, je ne sais pourquoi, sa “chair à saucisses,” l’a lâché comme un vulgaire rastaquouère, pour se mettre avec un jockey.—Gil Blas.
[Rat], m. (thieves’), young thief who is generally passed through a small aperture to open a door and let in the rest of the gang, or else conceals himself under the counter of a shop before the doors are closed, “little snakesman, or tool.”
He kept him small on purpose, and let him out by the job. But the father gets lagged.—Ch. Dickens, Oliver Twist.
Also thief who exercises his skill at inns or wine-shops. Courir le ——, to steal at night in lodgings, or at lodging-houses. Rat, thief who steals bread; —— de prison, barrister, or “mouthpiece.” Prendre des rats par la queue meant formerly to steal purses, when persons wore their purses at their girdles. A cut-purse was formerly called a “nypper.” A man named Wotton, in 1585, kept in London an academy for the education of pickpockets. Cutting them was a branch of the light-fingered art. Instruction in the practice was given as follows: a purse and a pocket were separately suspended, attached to which, both around and above them, were small bells; each contained counters, and he who could withdraw a counter without causing any of the bells to ring was adjudged to be a “nypper.” The old English cant termed cutting a purse, “to nyp a bunge.” Dickens, in Oliver Twist, shows Fagin educating the Dodger and Charley Bates by impersonating an old gentleman walking about the streets, the two boys following him and seeking to pick his pockets. (Popular) Rat de cave, excise officer, gauger; —— d’égout, scavenger. (Ecole Polytechnique) Rat, student who is late; —— de pont, student whose total of marks at the final examination does not entitle him to an appointment in the corps of government civil engineers of the Ponts et Chaussées; —— de soupe, one late for dinner. From rater, to miss. (Familiar) Rat, or —— d’opéra, young ballet dancer between the ages of seven and fourteen. (Sailors’) Rat de quai, man who looks out for odd jobs in harbours.