Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to bet without sufficient funds to cover one’s losses; thus levanting n.

1781		G. Parker View of Society II 170: They inform him that ‘he has been levanted, and that the fellow is now seven miles off’.
1905		Sun. Times (Perth) 28 May 1/1: His bailed-out bruiser levanted, leaving scribe’s good fiver to be estreated.

2. (UK Und.) to run off, to escape trouble, esp. to avoid gambling or other debts.

1825		C.M. Westmacott Eng. Spy I 371: Those who had nothing to give, but yet were too honourable to levant.
1837		R. Barham ‘The Lay of St. Odile’ Ingoldsby Legends (1889) 149: When he found she’d levanted, the Count of Alsace / At first turn’d remarkably red in the face.
1843		Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 18 Mar. 2/1: I have, in brighter days when admitted into better society, levanted from a racecourse.
1850		Era (London) 8 Sept. 3/2: They pocket all their takings, shut up shop, and ‘levant’ to some other locality, where [...] the same systematic robbery proceeds.
1862		Golden Age (Queenbeyan, NSW) 14 Aug. 3/3: [W]ould he hear anything about molasses the storekeeper, being victimized, owing to sloper ‘levanting’?
1870		(con. 1800s) Leeds Times 7 May 6/6: A respectable friend to whom he had entrusted his rooms had levanted with twenty pounds and all his best clothes.
1882		Dundee Courier 4 July 7/5: A girl I had taken up with robbed me of twenty pounds and then ‘levanted’.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 21 Mar. 5/4: [W]e have received a telegram from an old widow lady named Malowney, of Ballarat, asking us to troop round and make further enquiries about the matter. She has a son who levanted over to this side in ’74, and is consequently very much interested in the Minister’s statement.
1890		‘Rolf Boldrewood’ Colonial Reformer III 187: He has bolted, levanted, cleared out.
1895		Mirror of Life 11 May 6/2: [A] gentleman of the Jewish persuasion, who afterwards levanted with Jem Mace’s better half.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 20 Jan. 14/2: ‘Ha’penny currint starver.’ I gave him the roll and took the coin. He shared his loaf with No. 2, who, filling his mouth, grabbed the rest from No. 1 and levanted. No. 1 then came back crying, and said ‘Yer’s a brown; giv us another, and put it down me back.’.
1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 30 Jan. 1st sect. 1/1: They Say [...] That the horror of the local big-wigs at the war lord’s levanting is to;be set to dirge music.
1915		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘The Best Examples’ Sporting Times 6 Feb. 1/2: The artist saw and suddenly levanted.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 107: Levanted with the cash of a few ads.