Green’s Dictionary of Slang

put n.¹

a gullible and/or foolish individual.

1688		T. Shadwell Squire of Alsatia n.p.: Cant List: A Putt. One who is easily wheadled and cheated. [Ibid.] I i: And now your questions are fully answered, you put, you!
1701		Cibber Love Makes a Man I i: A Putt, by Jupiter! he don’t know the Air of a Gentleman, from the Air of the Country.
1716		J. Addison Drummer IV i: He looks like a put — a queer old dog as ever I saw in my life.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy V 309: Fops prat’ling, Dies rat’ling, Rooks shaming, Puts Daming.
1728		T. Walker The Quaker’s Opera II i: Why sure you Slut, you saucy Put.
1762		Bridges Homer Travestie (1764) I 73: Ulysses, Ajax, I’ll make puts, / And take their booty by the scuts.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Put, a country put, an ignorant aukward clown.
1809		G. Andrewes Dict. Sl. and Cant.
1818		‘A. Burton’ Adventures of Johnny Newcome II 65: Poor John! tho’ by no means a Put, A long time was the common Butt.
1828		Sussex Advertiser 14 Apr. 4/3: The ‘putts’ were ‘regularly queered’.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1911		J. Masefield Everlasting Mercy 3: ‘Out now,’ he says, ‘and leave your wire; / It’s mine.’ / ‘It ain’t.’ / ‘You put.’ / ‘You liar.’.

In phrases

old put (n.)

a pretentious old gentleman, an old fool.

1730		J. Gay Wife of Bath (rev. edn) V vi: I thought to have found the old Put my guardian here.
1739		Scots Mag. 1 Dec. 2/2: ‘’Slife! how he banters the old put!’.
1749		Fielding Tom Jones (1959) 223: Devil take my father [...] The old put wanted to make a parson of me.
1751		Smollett Peregrine Pickle (1964) 380: He was struck with the appearance of an old man, who no sooner entered the room than the mistress of the house very kindly desired one of the wits present to roast the old put.
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 55: Such a queer old put as you.
1785		L. Macnally Fashionable Levities Prologue: His Lordship [...] Thinks every honest bard a queer old Put.
1797		Bridges Burlesque Homer (4th edn) I 77: Just such a queer old put as you.
1799		Sporting Mag. Jan. XIII 233/2: For Tom was a wit [...] / And he’d queer the old putt, for his long-winded grace.
1800		Sporting Mag. Mar. XV 324/1: Good day, old Put! – but thou’rt a d—d odd Quiz.
1838		Crim.-Con. Gaz. 17 Nov. 104/3: The old put’ her father [...] forbade me the house.
1848		Thackeray Vanity Fair I 141: The captain has a hearty contempt for his father, I can see, and calls him an old put.
1883		St James’s Gazette 7 Aug. in Ware (1909) 187/1: It is quite credible that such a man, meeting in an omnibus an elderly gentleman of antiquated air and costume, should consider it funny to insult the ‘old put’ by pretending to be an intimate acquaintance, and accosting him with a familiar ‘How’s Maria?’.