Hog, subs. (old).—1. A shilling: also a sixpence: and (in America) a ten-cent piece. For synonyms, see Blow. Half-a-hog = sixpence, or five-cent piece.
1688. Shadwell, Squire of Alsatia, s.v. Hog, a shilling.
1690. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, s.v. Hog, You Darkman Budge, will you Fence your hog at the next Boozing ken? [[327]]
1714. Memoirs of John Hall (4th Ed.), p. 12, s.v.
1725. New Cant. Dict., s.v. Half a Hog, Six-Pence.
1809–12. Miss Edgeworth, Ennui, ch. vi. ‘It’s only a tester or a hog they want your honour to give ’em, to drink your honour’s health,’ said Paddy. ‘A hog to drink my health?’ ‘Ay, that is a thirteen, plase your honour; all as one as an English shilling.’
1825. Egan, Life of an Actor, ch. iv. You shall have … eighteen hog a week, and a benefit which never fails.
1842. Thackeray, Cox’s Diary in Comic Almanack, p. 237. Do you think I’m a-going to kill my horses, and break my precious back, and bust my carriage, and carry you, and your kids, and your traps, for six hog?
1851–61. H. Mayhew, Lond. Lab. and Lond. Poor, vol. i., p. 529. The slang phrases are constantly used by the street lads; thus a sixpence is a ‘tanner’; a shilling a ‘bob,’ or a hog.… The collections of coin dealers amply show, that the figure of a hog was anciently placed on a small silver coin.
1857. Mrs. Mathews, Tea Table Talk, p. 207. The shopwoman satisfied Suett after her fashion, that his little lump of Suett had absorbed flour and lard (pastry) to the amount of what her queer customer would have termed a hog.