Portuguese Synonym.—Medunhos.
1821. Haggart, Life, p. 121. My forks were equally long, and they never failed me.
1834. Ainsworth, Rookwood. ‘Nix my Dolly.’ No dummy hunter had forks so fly. Ibid. Jack Sheppard (1889), p. 20. I’ll give him the edication of a prig—teach him the use of his forks betimes.
1841. Tait’s Edinburgh Mag., VIII., p. 220. My forks were light and fly, and lightly faked away.
1891. Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette, 9 Feb. Up they came briskly with smiling mugs, shook hands, then stepped back a pace or two, put up their forks, and the spectators were hushed into silence, for they saw that the battle was about to begin.
3. In plural (common).—The hands.
4. (old).—A gibbet; in the plural = the gallows. [fork is often applied to anything resembling a divarication (as of a tree, river, or road), etc.: Cf., sense 2. Cf., Cicero (de Div., i., 26). Ferens furcam ductus est: a slave so punished was called furcifer.]
5. (old).—A spendthrift.
1725. New Canting Dict., s.v.
6. (tailors’ and venery).—The crutch (q.v.), nockandro (q.v.), or Twist (q.v.). [Thus, a bit on a fork = the female pudendum; a grind (q.v.).] Fr., ‘Fourcheure, that part of the bodie from whence the thighs depart.’—Cotgrave.