[Machabée], m. (popular), gay girls’ bully, or “ponce”; see [Poisson]; Jew, “mouchey, Ikey, or sheney;” body of a drowned person.
Je ne vois d’autre origine à cette expression que la lecture du chap. xii. du deuxième livre des Machabées, qui a encore lieu aux messes des morts; ou plutôt c’est de là que sera venue la danse macabre, dont l’argot a conservé le souvenir.—Michel.
Case des machabées, cemetery. Le clou des machabées, the “Morgue” or Paris dead-house. Mannequin à machabées, hearse. (Thieves’) Machabée, traitor, or “snitcher.” Literally a corpse, the informer in a prison, when detected, being generally murdered by those he has betrayed by means of the punishment termed “accolade,” which consists in crushing him against a wall.
Machaber (popular), to die, “to kick the bucket.” See [Pipe]. Machaber quelqu’un, to drown one. Se ——, to drink. Je me suis machabé d’un litre, I have treated myself to a litre bottle of wine.
Machicot, m. (popular), bad, mean player, or one who plays a “tinpot game.” In the Contes d’Eutrapel, a French officer at the siege of Chatillon is ridiculously spoken of as Captain Tin-pot—Capitaine du Pot d’Etain. Tin-pot as generally used means worthless.
Machin, m. (general), expression used when one cannot recollect the name of a person, “thingumbob, or what’s name.”
Machine, f. (literary, artists’, theatrical), production.
Cela m’est bien égal! Il n’est pas le seul à me dévisager. Je lui chanterai sa “machine” et il me laissera tranquille.—J. Sermet, Une Cabotine.
Grande ——, drama. Molière uses the word to describe an important affair or undertaking:—
J’ai des ressors tout prêts pour diverses machines.—L’Etourdi.