Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a donkey, an ass.

1836		‘Jack of Horslydown’ in Flash Casket 59: His moke is first at Billingsgate, / His cly ne’er vants a crown.
1841		‘Ax My Eye’ Dublin Comic Songster 100: I’ve a randy, dandy, tear up, flare up, / Moke, vot cost eleven bob.
1845		J. Lindridge Sixteen-String Jack 107: Forward wid the moke, do you hear, or we shall have Oliver looking after us before we know it.
1854		Thackeray Newcomes I 296: The one who rides from market on a moke.
1856		Melbourne Punch 20 Nov. 3/3: ‘Proposals for a New Slang Dictionary’ [...] MOKE-Noun: a Jerusalem pony.
1869		‘International Boat Race’ in C. Hindley Curiosities of Street Lit. (1871) 146: He wack’d the moke till he made him start.
1877		‘’Arry on His ’Oliday’ in Punch 13 Oct. 161/1: There’s rollicking rides on a moke.
1882		Tuapeka Times (Otago) 16 Sept. 4: He can’t ride a moke either with bridle or winkers.
1884		Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday 17 May 23/1: You don’t often meet with a coster who is an anti-smoker. As a rule he can’t get on without his moke.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Jan. 22/1: An old man and his little boy were driving an ass to the market to sell. ‘What a fool is this fellow,’ said a man upon the road, ‘to be swagging it on foot with his son, that the moke may go light!’.
1890		H. Lawson ‘A Word with Texas Jack’ in Roderick (1967–9) I 66: So when it comes to ridin’ mokes, or hoistin’ out the Chow, / Or stickin’ up for labour’s rights, we don’t want showin’ how.
1892		Albert Chevalier ‘The Coster’s Serenade’ 🎵 Seemed that the moke was saying ‘Do me proud;’ Mine is the nobbiest turn-out in the crowd.
1900		Punch 28 Mar. 217/3: Despite opinions to the contrary I incline to identify the moke with the ass or donkey. [...] In the works of one Punch, a learned writer, who alone redeems the 19th Century from the charge of barbarism, there is an account of a creature Mokeanna, which I take to be the feminine form of moke.
1912		Bulletin (Sydney) 22 Aug. 9/3: To see him bound upon the moke, / That, bridleless and free, / Is captured by the Proper Bloke – / Who weds the Proper She.
1916		G. Squiers Skitologues 17: ’E marched ’em up the Old Kent Road wif their barrers and their mokes.
1925		S. O’Casey Juno and the Paycock Act II: The voice of Joxer is heard singing [...] ’Me pipe I’ll smoke, as I dhrive me moke’.
1939		Rover 18 Feb. 28: None [...] thought he’d be ‘ass’ enough to carry his ‘moke’ when it gave up the ghost.
1944		J. Cary Horse’s Mouth (1948) 259: I was not surprised to hear that Lolie didn’t admire the abstract; no more than if a coster’s moke had told me it didn’t take much interest in St Paul’s dome.
1945		‘Cats on the Rooftops’ in Mess Songs & Rhymes of RAAF 1939-45 1: The donkey on the common is a solitary moke.

2. (also moak) a fool; a bore.

1855		D.G. Rossetti letter 25 Nov. in Letters (1965) I 282: He has an irreconcilable grudge against a poor moke of a fellow called Archer Gurney .
1866		Letters by an Odd Boy 25: You would have shut up that two-legged moke [...] who only opened his gills to brag.
1867		G.E. Clark Seven Years of a Sailor’s Life 80: Say, old moke, what time does the train start for Bangor? – He don’t know anything.
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 617: Moke, possibly a remnant of the obsolete moky, which is related to ‘murky,’ is used in New York to designate an old fogy or any old person, disrespectfully spoken to.
1873		J. Mair Hbk of Phrases 109: Moke, an old person, disrespectfully spoken to.
1884		Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday 24 May 31/3: ‘City Marshal Collins [...] got the drop on a “moke” who tried to pistol him’.
1895		Coburg Leader (Vic.) 5 Oct. 4/3: There is a boy named Dukie. / Of course he is a moke.
1896		W.C. Gore Student Sl. in Cohen (1997) 6: moke n. [...] A senseless, foolish fellow.
1900		T.J. Hains Mr Trunnell Mate of the Ship ‘Pirate’ Ch. vii: May the devil grab me, ye moke, if I wouldn’t rather swell up an’ bust wid th’ scurvy than swallow them fellows kickin’.
1900		E.H. Babbitt ‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:i 46: moke, n. A moderate bore.
1911		Out West Oct. 240: This same lady [...] considers the user of ‘in the push,’ — synonymous with ‘in the swim,’ — ’moak,’ ‘cove,’ et cetera, a subject for missionary effort.
1914		Sport (Adelaide) 10 July 3/4: Tod H. looked a real moke when they caught him in bed with his pants on .
1915		M.G. Hayden ‘Terms Of Disparagement’ in DN IV:iii 199: moke, about the same meaning and usage as mutt, or boob.
1933		R. Tate Doughman 151: A gelded old moke, he called me!
1992		R. Price Clockers 505: A lot of running around knocking myself out and feeling like a moke.
1998		H. Wilkinson Cincinnati Enquirer 4 Oct. 🌐 These high-priced talking heads who have been yammering on the network news shows for months about how this great bilious cloud of Bill Clinton will hang like a pall over this year’s congressional elections are going to look like grade A mokes if you people don’t get with the program.
2006		D. Winslow Winter of Frankie Machine (2007) 43: Herbie got clipped [...] and a couple of low-level mokes confessed to it.

3. (US) a prostitute [but note mawkes n. (2)].

1863

Criminal Life (NY) 19 Dec. n.p.: F. McLaughlin visits Broaday too often after drunken women and moaks.

4. (US und.) a pickpocket; a confidence trickster.

1867		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 21 Sept. n.p.: Owing to the [...] presence of a ‘fly-cop’ business outside was duff, although a ‘mob’ of city ‘mokes’ were on the lookout for ‘swag’ but were very ‘leery’.
1880		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 6 Nov. 11/3: [headline] The Awful Plight of a Tender Young Lawyer — Left Shivering in a Blanket While two Mokes Walk Off With His Clothing.

5. (Aus.) a horse, often a second-rate one.

1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 Nov. 20/1: The bushman then picked up the revolver and made the trooper handcuff himself, and walk ahead, while he [...] comfortably rode the Government moke. On arriving at their destination, the bushman [...] hand[ed] over the policeman, his horse, and revolver to the inspector in charge.
1894		G. Boothby On the Wallaby 266: He only appears sulky and says he wishes they’d give him ‘a bit better moke, and he’d give ’em a run for their money, anyhow!’.
1897		W.T. Goodge ‘Great Australian Slanguage’ in Baker Aus. Lang. (1945) 117: And a bosom friend’s a cobber, / And a horse a prad or moke.
1903		J. Furphy Such is Life 8: Grey mare belongs to you, boss — don’t she? — an’ the black moke with the Roman nose follerin’?
1911		L. Stone Jonah 123: Wait till I put the nosebag on the moke.
1923–4		F. Anthony ‘Gus Buys a Horse’ in Me And Gus (1977) 17: What’s the use of shooting a good moke like that just because she’s high-spirited?
1938		F. Anthony ‘Gus Tomlins’ in Me And Gus (1977) 122: The old moke just dropped off into a sleep.
1945		Baker Aus. Lang. 71: Moke [...] a horse, especially one of inferior type.
1958		F.J. Hardy Four-Legged Lottery 176: Darby Munro stealing a weight for age race on a moke.
1964		T. Ronan Packhorse and Pearling Boat 157: Our mokes got a good bellyful of weedy, luke warm, but still drinkable water.
1977		T. Ronan Mighty Men on Horseback 60: I slid to the ground, hooked my old moke’s bridle to the nearest post.
1981		J. Charles Black Billy Tea 9: I used to go to every show / Where they had a buck-jump ring. / The wildest moke I thought a joke, / I really had a fling.
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 73/1: moke an inferior horse, or jocular reference to a horse.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].