Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also baccer, bacco, baccy, backee, backer, backey, backy, backo, bakker, bakky) tobacco.

1699		implied in bacca-pipe
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 76: They chew’d their ’bacco three times o’er.
1796		T. Morton Way to Get Married in Inchbold (1808) XXV 27: Dick, fill this box with backy.
1812		J. Bell Jr. (ed.) Rhymes of Northern Bards 31: Cheer up, ma hinny! leet thy pipe, / And take a blast o’ backy!
1826		Pierce Egan’s Life in London 17 Sept. 683/1: [B]lowing my backey out of the first floor window of a Thames-overlooking public house.
1829		‘Soho Bazaar’ in C. Hindley James Catnach (1878) 194: A box of japan to hold backy.
1832		Egan Bk of Sports 158: That veed of all veeds, boys, the backee.
1833		‘Coalheavers’ Feast’ Fun Alive O! 60: Six pounds of backey, by way of a joke, / And twenty short pipes for the ladies to smoke.
1833		Satirist (London) 2 June 3/3: [G]in-drinking, bakky-chewing, beer-swilling, skittle-playing varlets.
1834		Marryat Peter Simple (1911) 10: You must larn to chaw baccy.
1837		‘Public Life of Mr. Tulrumble’ in Bentley’s Misc. Jan. 62: Are you going to [...] trace the progress of crime to ’baccer?
1837		‘Sailor Jack and Queen Victoria’ in C. Hindley Curiosities of Street Lit. (1871) 57: He turned his bacca o’er and o’er.
1838		T. Haliburton Clockmaker II 45: I didn’t want his backey, I only wanted an excuse to give him some.
1842		‘Sarah’s A Blowen’ Nobby Songster 19: To the lush-ken I go, / And my bacca I blow.
1843		Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 8 Apr. 3/1: He actually sneezed, pulled out his vipe, and said[...] ‘ned, railly there’s wonderful smell of ’baccy here ’.
1844		J. Overs Evenings of a Working Man 184: It likes ‘bakkey’ and abhors gin.
1846		New Swell’s Night Guide to the Bowers of Venus 29: In this tenement soldiers and their dolls regale in max and backee.
1848		Sinks of London Laid Open 63: Ben [...] was never known to utter a testy word, save and only then, when the ’bacco grew short.
1848		‘Ned Buntline’ Mysteries and Miseries of N.Y. I 77: Jist lind us the loan of thray pipes an’ a penny ’orth o’ baccy in ’em.
1854		Delhi Sketch Bk 1 Oct. 116/1: How many pipes of baccy will it take to make a Ram pugnacious?
1854		‘Cuthbert Bede’ Adventures of Mr Verdant Green (1982) II 232: That’s always the case with Barbadoes baccy!
1856		N.O. Weekly Delta 23 Nov. p.1 in A.P. Hudson Humor of the Old Deep South (1936) n.p.: The Cap’n of the boat was standin’ [...] chawin’ backer.
1857		‘Leary Man’ in ‘Ducange Anglicus’ Vulgar Tongue (1857) 42: From short pipe you must your bacca blow.
1860		Melbourne Punch 2 Aug. 181/2: [H]e will ‘babble of [...] bullocks, brandy and baccer’.
1863		T. Taylor Ticket-Of-Leave Man Act II: If you will nobble a fellow’s bacca, you must take the consequences.
1869		H. Smart Breezie Langton I 88: ‘Take a weed’ [...] ‘Delighted to [...] try your baccy’.
1873		W.H. Thomes Bushrangers 19: ‘You hear him,’ cried Hopeful, with staring eyes. ‘You can’t get that ’backer on shore. Don’t you attempt it.’.
1877		Five Years’ Penal Servitude 140: We ain’t any of us proud, so if you have’nt all got sheeroots, throw us baccy.
1878		G. Leybourne ‘Wheres Rosanna Gone’ in Comic Songs 16: Of an evening after tea, [...] her daddy blew his ’bacca.
1879		H. Hartigan Stray Leaves (2nd ser.) 197: The wonderful odours of beer, gin and rum; of ‘baccy’ from cigar and pipe.
1884		Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday 24 May 28/1: What is the difference between a new play at the Prince’s and half an ounce of bord’s eye? Why, don’t you see? one is Called Back, and the other’s called bacca.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 Feb. 11/2: The dusky desperado, who had fallen asleep three times during the delivery of this majestic address, suddenly woke up when the judge was finished, and, in a dazed tone, ejaculated – ‘You got em ’bacca?’.
1887		W.S. Gilbert ‘Mystic Selvagee’ Fifty ‘Bab’ Ballads 268: He gave him fifty pounds a year, / His rum, his baccy, and his beer.
1892		Albert Chevalier ‘Our Little Nipper’ 🎵 ’E sez, ‘And a screw of baccy,’ And ’e only stands about so ’igh, that’s all.
1892		Punch 26 Nov. 252: I am on for booze and backy.
1893–5		H. Lawson ‘Two Sundowners’ in Roderick (1972) 98: Bit o’ baccer, boss? Ain’t had a smoke for a week.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 11 Feb. 7/2: The backblock bar was empty save the rabbiter who sat / In a corner chewing bacca.
1897		Melbourne Punch 25 Feb. 4/4: When he’s standin’ sort o’ innercent an’ careless on their beats, / Squirtin’ ernuff ’backer juice t’ lay the dust.
1900		Boy’s Own Paper 29 Dec. 198: ‘Got a bit o’ baccy?’ he shouted.
1900		E.W. Rogers [perf. Marie Lloyd] The Red and The White and The Blue 🎵 Bloomin baccy, beef, and ballyhooly beer .
1901		Boys Of The Empire 23 Apr. 34: You have done me out of a suv’rin, and unlimited ’bacca.
1901		W.A. Sun. Times (Perth) 30 June 1/1: The decently-dressed passer by rarely escapes without a copious shower of bacca and blasphemy.
1913		A. Lunn Harrovians 40: The room fairly stank of baccy.
1913		Sport (Adelaide) 5 July 9/3: A stick of ’baccy .
1915		L.R. Dingus ‘A Word-List From Virginia’ in DN IV:iii 80: backer, n. Tobacco.
1918		C.J. Dennis ‘Sawin’ Wood’ Digger Smith 88: I goes down to the ’ouse an’ ’unts about / To find some ’baccer.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 179: I smoked his baccy.
1924		S. Scott Human Side of Crook and Convict Life 116: Say, padre, would you like to sell it [i.e. a crucifix]? [...] I might be able to get you some ’bacca for it.
1933		‘George Orwell’ Down and Out in Complete Works I (1986) 140: By God [...] dere’s sixpennorth o’ good baccy here!
1938		X. Herbert Capricornia (1939) 26: I give you plenty tucker, plenty bacca, plenty everything.
1940		O. Strange Sudden Takes the Trail 68: He was a stranger, an’ came in for baccy.
1946		Cornishman 18 July 4/4: [headline] A Rich Pipe o’ ‘-Bacca’.
1952		Hartlepool Mail 22 Aug. 9/2: Pensioers’ ‘Baccy’. Renewal books of tobacco tokens for old age pensioners will be ready [...] on Monday.
1982		J. Davis Dreamers 74: Sharing the last of the bacca, / some with clay pipes / and others rolling.
2002		Blue Pages (Dublin) ‘Dublin Dictionary’ 🌐 Baco Shortened version of tobacco.
2007		R. Milward Apples (2023) 41: Watching him roll a special cigarette [...] the baccy stuff making me think of Mam.
2009		L. McIlvanney All the Colours 89: [The] stink of slops and stale baccy, pish, disinfectant.
2012		J. Fagan Panopticon (2013) 234: The wind keeps blowing her baccy away.
2012		(con. 1943) G.S. Manson Coorparoo Blues [ebook] Jack slipped him [...] some tea and baccy.

2. attrib. use of sense 1; usu. in compounds below.

1837		Thackeray Yellowplush Papers in Works III (1898) 260: Master kem up to his own room as yaller as mustard, and smellin sadly of backo-smoke.
1860		Islington Gaz. 14 Apr. 3/1: My friend Tomkins, what keeps the ’bacca-shop next door.
1870		E. Greey Queen’s Sailors III 127: Old Yeh’s bakker-pouch.
1879		‘’Arry on the Rail’ Punch 13 Sept. 109/2: She complained that our bacco-smoke made her feel bad.

3. (also baccy) by metonymy, a cigar.

1894		J. Astley Fifty Years (2nd edn) II 128: Then, with a cigar in my mouth [...] I took my turn at the jumps. [...] I took a good hold of my baccy.
2000		N. Griffiths Grits 20: Duntchoo fuckin ferget now a give Billy-boy a fuckin baccy.