CONSTABLE, “to overrun the CONSTABLE,” to exceed one’s income, get deep in debt.
CONVEY, to steal; “CONVEY, the wise it call.”
CONVEYANCER, a pick-pocket. Shakespere uses the cant expression, CONVEYER, a thief. The same term is also French slang.
COOK, a term well known in the Bankruptcy Courts, referring to accounts that have been meddled with, or COOKED, by the bankrupt; also the forming a balance sheet from general trade inferences; stated by a correspondent to have been first used in reference to the celebrated alteration of the accounts of the Eastern Counties Railway, by George Hudson, the Railway King.
COOK ONE’S GOOSE, to kill or ruin any person.—North.
COOLIE, a soldier, in allusion to the Hindoo COOLIES, or day labourers.
COON, abbreviation of Racoon.—American. A GONE COON—ditto, one in an awful fix, past praying for. This expression is said to have originated in the American war with a spy, who dressed himself in a racoon skin, and ensconced himself in a tree. An English rifleman taking him for a veritable coon levelled his piece at him, upon which he exclaimed, “Don’t shoot, I’ll come down of myself, I know I’m a GONE COON.” The Yankees say the Britisher was so flummuxed, that he flung down his rifle and “made tracks” for home. The phrase is pretty usual in England.
COOPER, stout half-and-half, i.e., half stout and half porter.
COOPER, to destroy, spoil, settle, or finish. Cooper’d, spoilt, “done up,” synonymous with the Americanism, CAVED IN, fallen in and ruined. The vagabonds’ hieroglyphic
