poll n.2
a prostitute, a loose woman.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | ‘The Wind Blew Hard’ in Collection of Songs II 24: Poll swears she never saw his face; / He damns her for a faithless she. | |
| ‘Miscellaneous’ in Fancy I IV 101: A fair Cyprian, Miss Hurley [...] was induced, by some one who knew a little more, to take umbrage at this large bill: ‘Poll Hurley’ (early) said her friend, ‘damn it, don’t you see they’ve got you up, in print’. | |
| Navy at Home I 2: The whole ship’s company with their affectionate Polls and Salls. | |
| in Lummy Chaunter 60: [song title] Poll Of Drury. | |
| ‘The Chaffing Family’ in Nobby Songster 13: There’s Dick he chaffs Poll, about strumming all night. | |
| Pauper, Thief and Convict 26: Let him ‘take up with another poll,’ and [...] he had better choose some fresh locality. [Ibid.] 127: What was she! Why, a prostitute – one of the regular Polls. | |
| Sl. Dict. | |
| Venus in India II 125: She was as fine and nicely made a little Poll as you ever saw. | |
| Signor Lippo 25: They began to give him money [...] and a poll gave him a ‘bob’. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Aus. Sl. Dict. : Poll, a female of no character. | |
| Mop Fair 111: In clubland several men who had allowed their hearts to be true to their Polls had been expelled. | |
| Sporting Times 24 Dec. 4/1: [He] threatened to take off her wedding ring, so that the hotel people would take her for a ‘Poll’/ ‘A “Poll”!’ exclaimed the judge. ‘What did he mean by that?’ ‘I believe, m’lud, that it is a slang expresion for [...] a street-walker’. |
In phrases
to court, to live with without being married; thus polled up adj., with a woman.
| , | | Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. |
| , , | | Sl. Dict. |
| Sl. Dict. 257: [...] ‘polled up,’ living with a woman without being married to her [Hotten 1860]; … woman in a state of unmarried impropriety. Also, if a costermonger sees one of his friends walking with a strange woman, he will say to him on the earliest opportunity, ‘I saw yer when yer was polled up.’. | |
| Aus. Sl. Dict. 59: [P]olled up; a fellew living or is company with a poll. |