1690. B. E., New Dictionary. Game, c. Bubbles drawn in to be cheated.
1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s.v.
4. (thieves’).—Specifically, the game = thieving; also (nautical), slave trading; and (venery), the practice of copulation (e.g., good at the game = an expert and vigorous bedfellow. Cf., Shakspeare, Troilus, iv., 5, ‘Spoils of opportunity, daughters of the game’). In quot. (1639) it would seem that hen of the game = a shrew, a fighting woman.
1639–61. Rump, ii., 185. ‘Free Parliament Litany.’ From a dunghill Cock and a Hen of the Game.
1640. Ladies’ Parliament. Stamford she is for the game, She saies her husband is to blame, For her part she loves a foole, If he hath a good toole.
1668. Etheredge, She Would if She Could, i., 1. A gentleman should not have gone out of his chambers but some civil officer of the game or other would have … given him notice where he might have had a course or two in the afternoon.
17(?). Burns, Merry Muses, ‘Jenny Macraw’ (old song). Jenny Macraw was a bird of the game.
1839. Brandon, Poverty, Mendicity, and Crime, Glossary. On the game—thieving.
1851–61. Mayhew, Lond. Lab. and Lond. Poor, i., 263. Whether the game got stale, or Peter became honest, is beyond the purport of my communication to settle.
1857. Snowden, Mag. Assist. (3rd ed.), p. 444, s.v.