Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also caperanie, caperings) a dodge, a trick.

[1604		Marston Malcontent IV iv: Cross-capers! Tricks!].
[1700		M. Pix Beau Defeated II iii: I wear a Sword, and follow me ye Caper-cutter if ye dare].
1834		(con. 1737–9) W.H. Ainsworth Rookwood (1857) 177: And my father, as I’ve heard say [...] Was a merchant of capers gay / Who cut his last fling with great applause.
1844		New Sprees of London 3: I tell you what, such a cove as you should speal to the big town and let experience put you fly to the caperanies.
1846		Swell’s Night Guide 59: Them ’ere human society coves has dodged that caper nicely for sich as the likes of you.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor III 381/2: I mixed with the old hands and they put me up to a few capers.
1876		C. Hindley Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack 220: Of course this little ‘caper’ would only ‘wash’ once.
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 29 Apr. 2/2: This is the American aristocracy caper—the sublimation of lunacy.
1889		‘’Arry in Switzerland’ Punch 5 Dec. in P. Marks (2006) 97: That merry Swiss Boy got so jealous, along o’ some capers o’ mine.
1897		A.H. Lewis Wolfville 52: But Peets says it’s the reg’lar caper, an’ you can gamble Peets knows.
1900		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 31 Oct. 1/1: There was nothing ‘pure and simple’ about the caper.
1905		A. Binstead Mop Fair 118: Remember, headachey sickness an’ all that caper!
1912		Ade Knocking the Neighbors 50: Every time I pulled a Caper the stern-faced Mater would be at Elbow, saying: ‘Nix on the Acrobatics or you’ll lose your Number’.
1926		J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 74: That was a snide little caper we cut back there.
1938		J. Curtis They Drive by Night 27: Don’t half get up to some capers with the boys.
1944		Western Morn. News 25 Oct. 2/5: [He] described the procedure as ‘a proper caper’.
1957		R. Prather Always Leave ’Em Dying 114: It’s just a large-scale con game. And if they pull the caper off tomorrow, the Guardians won’t have any trouble explaining why.
1959		(con. 1940s) ‘David Forrest’ Last Blue Sea 87: Don’t come the caper with me, Corporal!
1965		F.J. Hardy Yarns of Billy Borker 109: I’ll invite you home to my place. That’s the caper, isn’t it?
1970		‘Red’ Rudensky Gonif 11: This was a caper I couldn’t make alone.
1986		J. Sullivan ‘Tea for Three’ Only Fools and Horses [TV script] We was mates, went everywhere together, got up to some right capers.
1992		R.G. Barrett White Shoes 3: The caper with the old block of flats had gone over smoother than a bunch of carnations on Mothers’ Day.
1999		E. Bunker Mr Blue 19: It was my first successful money caper.

2. a situation, an event.

1841		‘Jack Rag’ Dublin Comic Songster 5: Some boys they twigged the caper, and pelted him with snow.
1852		Kendal Mercury 17 Apr. 6/1: Ve thinks that a fellar vill get on as vell vith the genteel dodge as the shifty caper (angry mood).
1878		‘’Arry to the Front!’ in Punch 9 Mar. 100/2: This patriot caper is proper!
1894		A. Morrison Tales of Mean Streets (1983) 137: Now come the Rights o’ Labour caper.
1904		Sheffield Dly Teleg. 31 Dec. 8/6: Windy Capers in Sheffield. Tree falls Through a House Roof.
1938		J. Curtis They Drive by Night 26: They put the blokes inside on making sailors’ hammocks, ships’ fenders, haversacks for soldiers and all that caper, and the more they knock off the happier they are.
1941		Western Times 18 Apr. 3/3: ’twill be worth a trifle only to zee Nath appear to the wiss-drive. He reckons all such capers is wickedness.
1959		W. Brown Teen-Age Mafia 122: He’d never run into a caper like this.
1960		J.R. Ackerley We Think The World Of You (1971) 34: She might skip off, and I don’t see myself chasing after her. I’m too fat for such capers.
2000		J.J. Connolly Layer Cake 24: He’s got legal aid to take the whole fuckin caper to small claims court.

3. (mainly US) an occupation, a job.

1866		J. Greenwood Little Ragamuffin 121: ‘Are you goin’ a-tottin’, Smiffield?’ ‘No.’ [...] ‘Then what caper are you up to?’.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 30 Nov. 31/1: He delivers the stores to the cook, who remarks, ‘I’m about full-up of this blooming caper, I’m goin’ to leave.’ .
1923		Gippsland Times (Vic.) 1 Oct. 5/3: I cud write noos for a paper, / I cud sell cloes fer a draper / In fact, at enny caper / I wouldn’t be astray.
1952		C. Harris Death of a Barrow Boy 70: You sticking to this caper?
1961		B. Crump Hang On a Minute, Mate (1963) 61: There’s nothing much to learn in the fishing caper, Jack.
1978		P. Theroux Picture Palace 142: Writing a learned article, that sort of caper.
1985		R.G. Barrett You Wouldn’t Be Dead for Quids (1989) 16: I don’t know about this bouncin’ caper.

4. the proper course of action; esp. ext. as the proper caper, the right thing to do.

1887		Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Nov. 14/1: It is now a generally recognised fact that it is not the proper caper for a N.S.W. judge to let his butcher’s bill run on for more than eighteen months.
1894		Mirror of Life 31 Mar. 3/4: Less than two years ago a man would have quite a job to find a large-sized city where a variety theatre was not the proper ‘caper’.
1911		Gem 21 Oct. 19: I think it would be the proper caper for a crowd of our chaps to walk in.
1914		‘Hugh McHugh’ You Should Worry cap. 6: The proper and up-to-date caper in connection with taking snap-shots these days is to buy a developing outfit.
1931		D. Runyon ‘Broadway Financier’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 209: It is not the proper caper to be writing a banker such a letter.
1959		G. Slatter Gun in My Hand 186: That’s the caper, Fred.

5. a large-scale crime, usu. involving a great deal of elaborate planning and aimed at very large sums of money, expensive pieces of jewellery etc; the supposed lack of violence in such enterprises lent them a somewhat ‘jokey’ air.

1925		D. Hammett ‘The Gutting of Couffignal’ Story Omnibus (1966) 30: The princess can give you a fat cut of the profits in a busted caper.
1936		(ref. to 1920s) L. Duncan Over the Wall 36: Whitey [...] had boasted incessantly that the caper would net us at least about four grand.
1947		J. Maclaren-Ross ‘The Dark Diceman’ in Bitten by the Tarantula (2005) 202: Gangsters enter and offer him the chance of coming in on a caper.
1949		W.R. Burnett Asphalt Jungle in Four Novels (1984) 317: When this caper’s over [...] I’m through with that hunky so-and-so.
1955		‘Blackie’ Audett Rap Sheet 29: Blackie’s in on the caper.
1960		C. Cooper Jr Syndicate (1998) 54: You expect me to believe that pansy was the brains in a half million dollar caper.
1970		‘Red’ Rudensky Gonif 6: The St. Louis jewelry caper was a major operation.
1985		N. Pileggi Wiseguy (2001) 184: A show-biz caper in which there hadn’t been a shot fired.
1999		Guardian Rev. 10 Sept. 5: The jaunty 1969 crime caper about the cockney casanova of crime who pulls off a bullion heist in Turin.

6. a crime, irrespective of scale.

1926		J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 96: This caper I’m tellin’ you about was a third-class ‘P.O.’ outside of Butte, Montana.
1935		D. Lamson We Who Are About to Die 194: If Mike would stage this caper [...] then the kid would break it up.
1949		W.R. Burnett Asphalt Jungle in Four Novels (1984) 143: He’d done a full, hard stretch [...] rather than implicate anyone else in the caper.
1959		W. Burroughs Naked Lunch 162: The criminal manqué nerves himself to crack a pay toilet [...] ‘A caper,’ he says, ‘I’ll pull this capon I mean caper.’.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Pimp 64: While doing his year for our caper he had copped a lonely hearts broad through the mails.
1976		P. Theroux Family Arsenal 204: That was a brilliant caper – it really had the art world up in arms, right?
1985		S. Berkoff West in Decadence and Other Plays (1985) 112: My total confidence in this night’s caper.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 21: The caper fits yall’s M.O. like a rubber.
1994		G. Disher Crosskill [ebook] ‘Funny money coming in from the States [...] caper like that’.
2000		Indep. on Sun. Culture 21 May 12: Guy Ritchie’s 1998 crime caper.
2008		R. Price Lush Life 30: Like he’s my automatic mastermind on a caper .
2012		‘Dutch’ ? (Pronounced Que) [ebook] Gutta got the math on scrams that did that VA beach caper.

7. a scheme.

1926		Mirror (Perth) 6 Nov. 12/1: The husband had declined to play nark, although he had been oiled about the other cove’s capers.
1953		T. Runyon In For Life 205: He had helped me set up the caper [i.e. an escape].
1958		R. Prather Scrambled Yeggs 41: Of all the crackpot capers [...] this takes the cake.
1976		D. Ireland Glass Canoe (1982) 63: Sibley’s next caper was to go round asking questions.
1997		Simon & Burns Corner (1998) 11: Soon they are laughing together about the caper that got them here.
2000		R.G. Barrett Leaving Bondi (2013) [ebook] ‘What’s his caper?’.
2006		B. Matthews Intractable [ebook] Ray had been shanghaied to Goulburn after Denning pulled his caper at Parramatta.
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 135: ‘This bullshit caper [...] could bite us on the ass’.

8. an affair.

1957

Mad mag. Nov.–Dec. 15: Next time one of the gang brags about a caper with the opposite sex, take it with a grain of salt.

9. (N.Z.) a thing, an object.

1964

R. Helmer Stag Party 108: Just tryin’ out the phone. She’s a beaut caper, eh?