Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (UK Und.) a confidence trickster.

1777		J. Fielding Thieving Detected 46: Its worth at least, replies the Sharp, is fifty guineas.
1789		G. Parker Life’s Painter 132: Ye flats, sharps, and rum ones, who make up this pother.
1791		‘Flash Lang.’ in Confessions of Thomas Mount 19: A gambler, a sharp.
1801		C. Dibdin Yngr Song Smith 68: We all know that Greeks take in both flats and sharps.
1807		Morn. Post (London) 12 Oct. 3/2: One of the first billiard and forte-piano players [...] paid us a visit but soon took his departure on finding here more sharps than flats.
1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang.
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) 275: There are to be found here as many flats and sharps as would furnish the score of a musical composer.
1832		Egan Bk of Sports 49: Lots of sharps to be met with, and plenty of flats to be picked up!
1842		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 26 Feb. n.p.: Butchers and bakers, flats and sharps — in fact, all kinds from a German flute to a penny whistle.
1845		J. Lindridge Sixteen-String Jack 208: Danged if any of the London sharps will rob I.
1857		‘Leary Man’ in ‘Ducange Anglicus’ Vulgar Tongue (1857) 43: At knock’emsdown and tiddlywink, / To be a sharp you must not shrink.
1868		‘Six Years in the Prisons of England’ in Temple Bar Mag. Nov. 539: You know if it were not for the flats, how could the sharps live?
1870		Sportsman (London) 9 Mar. 2/1: The ‘greenhorn’ wants the ‘sharp’s’ money, but he is generally punished by not only not getting it, but by losing his own.
1873		J. O’Connor Wanderings of a Vagabond 232: Meantime [...] many sharps fitted up fashionable skinning-houses in the city, and conducted them with various success.
1880		G.R. Sims Zeph (1892) 73: The two highly-respectable looking gentlemen [...] he knows to be two of the cleverest ‘sharps’ in London.
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 8 July 3/1: Well, for a rounder and a sharp, Jack, you are the biggest ‘sucker’ yet hooked .
1893–4		H. Lawson ‘Stiffner & Jim’ in Roderick (1972) 124: He said that men were driven to be sharps, and there was no help for it.
1906		G.R. Sims Mysteries of Modern London 43: The sharp is going to ask him to his flat [...] and he is going to be ‘rooked’ of a large sum of money.
1917		‘Banjo’ Paterson ‘Victor Second’ Three Elephant Power 113: One day the boy we had looking after The Trickler fell in with a mob of sharps.
1929		V.W. Saul ‘Vocab. of Bums’ in AS IV:5 344: Sharp—One skilled or crooked at games.
1930		L. Lower Here’s Luck 102: ‘I heard about the sharps in Sydney and I’m taking no chances’ .
1933		M. Marshall Tramp-Royal on the Toby 117: City sharps, town flats, and village naturals.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 190/2: Sharp or Sharper. 1. A skilful card cheat; a crooked gambler. 2. An expert.
1962		L. Block ‘Naked and the Deadly’ in One Night Stands (2008) 227: ‘Who played in the [poker] game?’ ‘Two or three of the sharps. And Dad.’.

2. an expert or connoisseur, a clever person or one who poses as such; also, in comb. with n., a job title, e.g. doctor sharp, revenue sharp.

1821		W.T. Moncrieff Tom and Jerry III i: tom: We are, indeed, a regular trio; every part well harmonized. log.: Ay, all sharps! not a flat or a natural among us.
1847		‘Epistle from Joe Muggins’s Dog’ in Era (London) 7 Nov. 3/3: The Flatcatcher did the ‘sharps’ to a good tune, who hall looked werry ‘green’.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum 119: As a general thing, the billiard-sharp is a retired marker, who [...] is smart enough, and has learned tricks enough at his former business, to enable him to win as much money as he wants from the less experienced amateurs of the game, who figure in his vocabulary as ‘the flats.’.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 345/2: I was not what you might term a skittle sharp, for I never entered into a plot to victimise any person.
1872		Galaxy (N.Y.) Apr. 491: He is the person [...] of whom the man behind the counter remarks, before he is fairly out of ear-shot, ‘One of the sharps—he’s goin’ for a sure thing.’.
1882		‘Mark Twain’ ‘Answer to Correspondents’ in Celebrated Jumping Frog and Sketches 40: You were doing it to ‘show off’ [...] I can tell you Arizona opera-sharps, any time.
1890		Sporting Times 4 Jan. 1: Have I got hold of a most infernal fool or a most amazing sharp?
1897		A.H. Lewis Wolfville 19: This yere Peets is the finest-eddicated an’ levelest-headed sharp in Arizona.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 209: The moonshiners [...] figured me out as a revenue sharp.
1906		A.H. Lewis Confessions of a Detective 7: If that doctor sharp ’ll only let me [...] get my hooks on the scales.
1916		Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 224: In one of his songs he speaks of the billiard sharp who is condemned to play: On a cloth untrue.
1925		Wodehouse Carry on, Jeeves 33: I don’t know why it is – one of those psychological sharps could explain it.
1950		see sense 1.

3. in pl., from medical jargon sharps, needles, scalpels etc.

4. (US campus) an attractive and/or socially adept person.

1962		(con. WWII) J.O. Killens And Then We Heard The Thunder (1964) 75: A sharp like you must’ve had a whole lot of good-looking red-hot brown-skin mamas hot in behind you up in New York.
1967–8		Baker et al. CUSS 192: Sharp A sexually attractive person, female. A sexually attractive person, male. A socially adept person. A quick or witty person.