Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the head.

c.1600		Shakespeare Hamlet V i: Chapless, and knocked about the mazzard with a sexton’s spade.
1605		Chapman All Fooles III i: But in thy amorous conquests at the last Some wound will slice your mazer.
1627		G. Peele Merrie Conceited Jests 18: But Master Peele had another drift in his mazzard; for he did ply her with wine.
1639		Beaumont & Fletcher Wit Without Money II iii: The pint-pot has so [...] fortified your mazard, that now there’s no talking to you.
1663		S. Butler Hudibras Pt I canto 2 line 707–8: Where thou might’st stickle without hazard / Of outrage to thy hide and mazzard.
1762		Bridges Homer Travestie (1764) I 70: I’ve a great mind, you lousy wizard, / To lay my fist across your mazzard.
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 491: pandocus next he struck hap hazard / And laid a stick across his mazard.
1789		Both Sides of the Gutter part II 12: He makes a sally up to de Minister’s mazard.
c.1790		‘Luke Caffrey’s Gost’ Luke Caffrey’s Gost 2: He squar’d up to de two Bailies, tip’d one of dem a loving sqeeze [...] and a back spang in de mazzard, dat made his daylights dance to de tune of de old cow and de hay-stack.
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) 348: Rouge-et-noir and Hazard / With each knowing mazzard.
1833		Cruikshank & Wight Sun. in London 63: The fairest and most intellectual portion of this beautiful world are celebrating [...] by tossing for mutton-pies, bibulating in beer-shops [....] and knocking each other over the mazzard for a qvort’n of gin!
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open 115: Mazzard, the head.
1851		Bell’s Life in Sydney 31 May 1/7: Massey, with his swelled mazzard, stood a good chance of having his shutters put up.
1853		N.Y. Clipper n.p.: Jones dashed at his man [...] but was met with severity on the mazzard and smeller.
1858		‘The Honour of the Family’ Town Talk 10 July 110: That slice on thy mazzard, which thou gottest by tumbling over thine own hanger in Virginia Meg’s brandy shop.
1861		Vanity Fair (N.Y.) 9 Nov. 216: Cramp BILLY SEWARD, stave in CHASE’S mazzard.
1891		S.O. Addy Sheffield Gloss. (Supp.) 37: Mazzard, the head.
1905		A. Binstead Mop Fair 213: Mr. Contango would instantly fetch him a crack across the mazzard with a bar towel.
1923		Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves 5: If anyone had told me that a tie like that suited me, I should have [...] struck them on the mazzard.

2. the face.

1628		R. Speed Counter-Rat F4: Then me they struck / Ath’ mazzard, An action of strong Battry! Good! They made my nose then gush out bloud.
1762–71		H. Walpole Vertue’s Anecd. Paint. (1786) IV 103: His countenance harmonized with his humour, and Christian’s mazard was a constant joke [OED].
1819		‘One of the Fancy’ Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress 14: While the Porpus kept guard / O’er his beautiful mug, as if fearing to hazard / One damaging touch in so dandy a mazzard.
1827		Egan Anecdotes of the Turf, the Chase etc. 69: He did not mean to hurt this man, for if he did, he would not have left an ivory in his mazzard.
1841		Bell’s Life in London 22 Apr. 4/4: Jones soon after displayed his [...] mazzard.
1859		‘Scene in a London Flash-Panny’ Matsell Vocabulum 100: Another fair damsel [...] emphatically declared, that if the tenant in possession did not immediately leave that, she would astonish her mazzard with the contents of a ‘nipper-kin of thunder and lightning’.
1885		D.C. Murray Rainbow Gold I 197: The master-builder waxed that wroth at him he lent him a clout across the mazzard with a trowelful o’ mortar.
1906		E. Pugh Spoilers 38: The preacher, smearing the blood across his grizzled mazzard in a broad red streak, seized the rail.
1928		‘Sapper’ Female of the Species (1961) 202: I pasted him good and hearty in the mazzard.
1949		Wodehouse Mating Season 100: A woman who [...] would press the trigger and let me have a fluid ounce of whatever the hell-brew was squarely in the mazzard.

3. (Anglo-Irish) the ‘head’ of a coin.

1802		M. & R. Lovell Edgeworth Essays on Irish Bulls 129: ‘Skull!’ says I – and down come three brown mazzards.
1812		Spirit of Irish Wit 102: [M]azzards [meant] whisky.