Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US) to trick, to fool.

1937–84

Partridge DSUE (1984) 459/1: from ca. 1855.

2. to persuade, to ‘con’.

1804		T.G. Fessenden ‘Canto II’ Poems 39: Our lover now feeling secure [...] Made horrid attempt, to be sure, / (If a body may say it,) to squeeze her; / But Tabby was terribly wroth / To think that he should get round her, / And snatched up a kettle of broth, / And knock’d him down flat as a flounder.
1848		G.F. Ruxton Life in the Far West (1849) 98: One from the land of Cakes [...] sought to ‘great round’ [sic] (in trade) a right ‘smart’ Yankee, but couldn’t ‘shine’.
1880		Leicester Chron. 6 Nov. 9/2: If you can get round her, she’s bone for half-a-quid.
1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 20 July 32/3: You leave it to mother. [...] She’ll get round him. She’s going to tell him how poor father’s last days were spoilt by his remembering how he had been hard on others.
1907		N.Z. Truth 26 Jan. 6/4: Some of these darkies [...] have been getting round the girls.
1910		Wodehouse Psmith in the City (1993) 44: We got round him by joining the Archaeological Society.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 730: ...that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him.
1942		W.R. Burnett Quick Brown Fox 241: Good thing it’s Joe who’s got the say here, he thought. Ray had an instinctive respect for old people. Mr. Smithers would have got round him nicely.
1956		I. Anstruther I Presume 92: Livingstone baffled them; they could not get round him or frighten him or make him lose his temper, and in the end they always gave in.

3. to escape from an obligation or activity; to arrange events as one prefers them.

1937–84		Partridge DSUE (1984) 459/1: from ca. 1895.
1937		P. Morris [trans.] Bernanos Diary of a Country Priest 229: Anyone in constant pain will soon realize how it has to be got round, how cunning will get the better of it.

4. (Aus.) to get equal, to achieve equality in a business deal.

1900–10

Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 14: ‘Getting round’ is equivalent to being even on any business or speculation.