dress, v. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

dress v.

[ironic use of SE dress, to treat a person properly]

1. to beat, to thrash, thus n. dressing.

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1838		‘Alfred Crowquill’ Seymour’s Humourous Sketches (1866) 41: I tell you what, my lads, if I knew your master, I’d pull you up, and have you well dressed.
c.1850		Peeping Tom (London) 52 107/2: Harvey threatening to give a poor cabman a ‘good dressing’ the man replied [etc].
1858		Bell’s Life in Sydney 25 Sept. 3/2: The trio tore her bonnet and clothes, giving her what is known in eating house parlance as ‘a good dressing’.
1895		Coburg Leader (Vic.) 3 Aug. 1/6: Bullm E. got a terrible doing in the Glen Sunday night. Puds gave Bulm such a dressing that his people hardly knew him.

2. (UK Und.) to subject to robbery; thus dressing n.

1859		Calif. Police Gazette 30 Jan. 2/4: One night last week she ‘dressed’ two men, one to the amount of ten dollars, the other seventeen.
1865		Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 5/2: It being market day, we concluded to give hull a ‘dressing’ but we had not ‘worked’ it long before the ‘fly-cops’ were out in quest of us.

SE in slang uses

In compounds

dress-and-breath (n.) [the most effort she makes is to get dressed and breathe]

(US black) a very lazy woman.

1933

in Z.N. Hurston ‘The Guilded Six-Bits’ in Major Calling the Wind (1993).

dress-up (n.)

(US Und.) an outfit of one’s best clothes.

1933

Ersine Und. and Prison Sl.

In phrases

dress a front (v.)

(UK police/und.) to use treacle as a ‘glue’ when placing brown paper over a window prior to breaking it; the effect is to muffle the sound of breaking glass.

1950

P. Hoskins No Hiding Place! 190/1: Dressing the Front. Plastering a window with treacle on brown paper to deaden the sound of smashing it.

dress a hat (v.) [‘Most likely from the fact that a hat receives the attention of three or four people before it is properly fit for wear’ (Slang Dict., 1873)]

to carry out various methods of robbery contrived by two or more servants or shopmen, either exchanging their master’s goods (e.g. shoes for a hat) or pooling them (the butcher’s boy steals steaks, the potboy steals beer etc) and all is sold to a third party.

1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 3: Dress a Hat - Exchanging stolen property by servants and shopmen to avoid detection.

dress and res (v.)

(US black) to dress smartly, fashionably.

1999

‘Master Pimp’ Pimp’s Rap 161: Nigger, I was dressing and ressing when you were wearing shitty diapers.

dress it in mourning (v.)

see under mourning n.