Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the human skin; thus in one’s pelt, naked.

1622		Middleton & Rowley The Changeling I i: She had rather wear my pelt tann’d in a pair Of dancing pumps [...] I know she hates me.
1694–6		Dryden Virgils Georgics III in Chalmers (1810) 319/2: A scabby tetter on their pelts will stick.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
c.1830		M. Moran ‘Pharo’s Daughter’ n.p.: Old Pharo’s daughter went to bathe in style, / She tuk her dip and came unto the land / And for to dry her royal pelt she ran along the strand [BS].
1912		R. Service ‘I’m Scared of it All’ Rhymes of a Rolling Stone 159: I’m trapped like a fox and I fear for my pelt.
1916		P. Kyne Cappy Ricks 27: How did you tan his pelt?
1922		Joyce Ulysses 240: He stood looking in at the two puckers stripped to their pelts.
1938		N. Lindsay Age Of Consent 204: Ye have her in her pelt before me very eyes.
1953		L. Doyle Back to Ballygullion 180: Go in your pelt with your coat over your arm.
1966		P. Boyle At Night All Cats Are Grey 188: The way a decent modest girl could make such a disgrace of herself. To be found stretched out in your pelt on the floor.
1970		C. Brown Down All the Days 11: Lying in their pelts on the big flat boat-shaped slab of rock in the middle of the river, toasting in the sun.
1982		G.V. Higgins Patriot Game (1985) 231: Hurts like hell when they take those pliers to your pelt, get the pellets dug out.
1989		H. Leonard Out After Dark 92: Why are you in your pelt?
1993		(con. 1930s) M. Verdon Shawlies, Echo Boys, the Marsh and the Lanes 89: I’d wash the children of a Saturday night. Fill up the old metal tub and they splashing around in it like seals in their pelts.
2005		J. Stahl I, Fatty 223: The only pelt he laid eyes on was Virginia’s.

2. (US) a horse.

1934

W.R. Burnett Goodbye to the Past 90: He’d heard that Ross had paid a pretty penny for that gelding and Ross had told somebody that now he had a horse to trim that damn old black pelt with!

3. a human being.

1970		Current Sl. V:3 10: Pelt, n. A girl.
1974		J. Lahr Hot to Trot 222: ‘She’s a scag.’ ‘Are you kidding, George? That’s a pelt and a half.’.

4. (US) female pubic hair, thus by meton. the woman herself.

1991		P. Blauner Slow Motion Riot 115: He keeps pointing to a white chart on a nearby easel that says ‘Post-Entry Level Training or PELTS,’ which I always thought was a derogatory term for women.
1996		(con. 1974) J. Lardner Crusader 242: [of an attractive undercover policewoman] David went to Captain Gertrude Schimmel, the unofficial doyenne of policewomen. ‘I need a real pelt,’ he told her.