Pill, to blackball a man at a club. Sometimes a man who is blackballed is described as having received too much medicine.
Pill-box, a doctor’s carriage.
Pin, “to put in the PIN,” to refrain from drinking. From the ancient peg tankard, which was furnished with a row of PINS, or pegs, to regulate the amount which each person was to drink. Drunken people are often requested to “put in the PIN,” from some remote connexion between their unsteadiness and that of a carriage wheel which has lost its linch-PIN. The popular cry, “Put in the PIN,” can have no connexion with the drinking PIN or peg now, whatever it may originally have had. A MERRY PIN, a roysterer. See [PEG].
Pinch, to steal or cheat; also, to catch, or apprehend.
Pinchbeck, inferior, deteriorated. Anything pretending to more than its proper value is said to be PINCHBECK.
“Where, in these PINCHBECK days, can we hope to find the old agricultural virtue in all its purity?”—Framley Parsonage.
Pinchbeck was an inferior metal, compounded of copper and zinc, to resemble gold. It was very fashionable in the last century, and derived its name from a Mr. Pinchbeck, a well-known London tradesman, who manufactured watches, buckles, and other articles out of it. Pinchbeck first obtained his notoriety by the invention of an ingenious candle-snuffers, which the author of The Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers made the vehicle of a facetious Ode that went through eight editions. The title of this jeu d’esprit ran thus:—
“Ode to Mr. Pinchbeck, upon his Newly-invented Candle-Snuffers, by Malcolm M’Gregor, Esq., 1776.
“Illustrious Pinchbeck! condescend,
Thou well-beloved, and best king’s friend,
These lyric lines to view;
Oh, may they prompt thee, ere too late,
To snuff the candle of the State,
That burns a little blue!”
Pinchbeck published a poetical reply, and the two pamphlets were for a long time the talk of the town.