Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also quisby snitch) of people, unwell; out of sorts.

1844		New Sprees of London 3: Nanty palary the rumcull of the Casey is [...] quisby in the nut, not fly, not up to the moves, not down to the dodges, not awake, can't tumble to the slums, not wido to the slangs.
1855		Yokel’s Preceptor 29: Quisby, Queer, bad.
1887		‘’Arry at the Sea-Side’ in Punch 10 Sept. 111/1: Things is quisby at ’ome, and they pressed me to chuck up my annual spree, / And stand to look arter the mater who’s down with rheumatics. Not me!
1890		‘’Arry on the Sincerest Form of Flattery’ in Punch 20 Sept. 144/2: It do give me the ditherums, Charlie, it makes me feel quite quisby snitch.
1897		Adcock ‘At the Dock Gates’ in Keating Working Class Stories of the 1890s (1971) 124: ‘Ow’s the missus?’ ‘Bad.’ ‘An’ the kid? Bin quisby, ain’t he?’.
1909		Manchester Courier 2 Jan. 6/7: One is feeling altogether in a quisby sort of health.

2. of events, objects or people, unpleasant or malfunctioning.

1807		H. Tufts Autobiog. (1930) 293: Quisby cove, a mean fellow. [...] Quisby gorge signifies a mean (dirty) fellow.
1843		Caledonian Mercury 14 Sept. 2/5: Business is so quisby now that I doesn’t take tuppence a day.
1844		New Sprees of London 26: [B]y this petty jealousy, [he] makes the singing as quizby as the lush.
1846		Swell’s Night Guide 59: Billy’s not pluck to fake the grand duck [...] Billy fams the quizby’s and nunks to the smallies. An artful dodger.
1847		Era 24 Jan. 3/3: A Selling Sweepstakes, for all ages, was carried off by a quisby-legged old Evenus, who gave the go-by to Cherokee.
1848		Ladies’ Repository (N.Y.) Oct. VIII:37 316/2: Quisby, ragged; dirty; suspicious.
1852		Era 4 Jan. 3/3: Some quisby doings there will be yet.
1855		Broadway Belle (NY) 1 Jan. n.p.: What would ye with me, thou quisby dog?
1863		Criminal Life (NY) 19 Dec. n.p.: ‘Vot a quisby cove’.
1879		Gloucester Citizen 17 July 4/1: But things always go quisby when Discipline’s lax!
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 25 Mar. 6/3: he was not likely to be paralyzed any longer by ‘a quisby old woman,’ no matter how many shekels she represented.
1890		Music Hall & Theatre Rev. 25 Oct. 10/1: The artistes engaged by the management are performers, ‘not quisby turns’.
1891		‘’Arry on Arrius’ in Punch 26 Dec. 303/2: The duffers who dub you a dunce / ’Cos yer ’Omer, or haitches, is quisby.
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 10 Feb. 6/5: [headline] The New Pugilistic ‘Star’ Turns Out to Be a Rushlight [...] They ‘discover’ some quisby ‘champions’ in America.

3. bankrupt, poverty-stricken.

1853		Dickens ‘Slang’ in Household Words 24 Sept. 75/2: To say that a man is without money, or in poverty, some persons remark that he is down on his luck, hard up, stumped up, in Queer Street, under a cloud, up a tree, quisby, done up, sold up, in a fix.
1859		Wkly Varieties (Boston, MA) 3 Sept. 6/1: Peter C. Cunningham, a drunken Scottish printer and quisby actor, has pawned his wig for rum.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 7: Quibsy [sic]- Bankrupt, poverty-stricken, ‘queer’.
1929		Advertiser (Adelaide) 25 Oct. 32/8: The ‘gloak’ (beggar) who is ‘quisby’ (broke) and cannot find a ‘downy earwig’ (sympathetic clergyman) is enlightened by cryptic signs of the whereabouts of the nearest ‘dolly shop’ (illegal pawnbroker).

4. in sense of obscene ‘dirt‘: pornographic.

1885

Edinburgh Eve. News 28 Sept. 3/2: Hundreds of obscene books published and sold [...] ‘quisby’ books as they are called in the trade.

5. counterfeit.

1892

Manchester Courier 3 Dec. 14/5: The golden coin he handed her; she dropped it in the till [...] He bowed adieu [...] Exulting that for one more quisby quid he’d got the change.