tack n.1
1. (UK Und.) in pl., money, either notes or coins.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | New and Improved Flash Dict. |
2. (orig. naut.) food, ship’s biscuit.
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Bell’s Life in Sydney 28 Apr. 2/7: I’m not a cook but I believe that bone soup is first-rate tack. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | (con. 1875) Cruise of the ‘Cachalot’ 188: I’ve et some dam queer tack in my time. | |
| Boy’s Own Paper 24 Aug. 750: Ham and Eggs and Tea and Coffee [...] and other good tack. | |
| Sporting Times 13 May 2/5: Your predecessor used to bring his own tack in a poverty-stricken black tin box — looked horrible and doubtless tasted so. | |
| Bemidji Dly Pioneer (MN) 30 Mar. 2/2: Scouse or lobscouse, a parosn’s face sea pie, junk, tack, slush and duff —there’ a meal ye can’t beat [...] Tack and slush is the sailor’s bread and butter. | |
| Cockney At Home 159: Coffee and cake – beastly common tack. | |
| They Die with Their Boots Clean 84: Some sort of salesman of some kind of biscuits or some such tack. |
3. drink.
| Bell’s Life in Sydney 17 June 3/1: Sneaking away from the bar with five bottles of the ‘real tack’. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 25 July 7/1: Before going in, however, Mr. Backblocks (such was the supporter’s name) suggested that a ‘nip’ would settle the champagne down and cut the cobwebs out of their throats. ‘All right, […] there’s some “grand tack” up stairs.’. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 27 Oct. 14/1: You can get it in Sydney; but there it is so messed up with water and coloring and flavoring matter that 80 per cent. of the bite is out of it. Here we get the ‘rale white tack,’ straight from the still – the proper stuff to run amok on! | |
| Spoilers 65: It ain’t the tack to do graft on. | |
| Age (Melbourne) 10 Nov. 23/2: ‘Queer tack for him, though. Vin blanc vin rouge’. | |
 | ‘The Hold up Rag’ in Bum Bandit [cartoon lyrics] Bring me a barrel of whiskey, / A barrel of good old Three Star, / A handful of tacks for a chaser, / And a light for this lousy cigar. | |
| Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld) 1 Mar. 10/4: Cripes, it was corker tack. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Best of Myles (1968) 71: A dose he was after makin up in a glass, desperate-lookin red tack. | |
| Scarperer (1966) 109: As for the other tack, Barsac and Chablis [...] worse still. | |
| Night to Make the Angels Weep (1967) I x: saxon: Wine, you mean? dig: Yeah, any old tack. | |
| Thief of a Christmas in Plays: 2 (1993) Act II: Aisy on the tack, Séamus. |
4. money [separate development to sense 1].
| Small Time Crooks 43: Some swell dames with plenty of tack would like to keep a husky like Micky Donovan. |
In compounds
a food-seller.
| Time for a Tiger 17: ‘That bloody Jock Keir with the money rattling in his pocket. Tack wallah’s joy-bells’ . |
In phrases
to drink after a period of abstinence.
| diary 3 Oct. 🌐 Many lifelong teetotallers broke the tack and mucked in down the Canteen or Mess. |
1. (orig. naut.) bread as opposed to biscuits or hard tack.
| Man o’ War’s Man (1843) 38: Bring us plenty of murphies, and eggs, and soft tack. | |
| Peter Simple (1911) 219: The gun-room steward then came back with a basket of soft tack, i.e. loaves of bread. | |
| Na Motu 80: Indulge me with ‘soft tack.’. | |
| letter 1–2 June in Longacre From Antietam to Fort Fisher (1985) 186: Bring me four loaves of ‘soft tack.’. | |
| Slaver’s Adventures 206: The alligators [...] snaps ’em up like a piece of soft tack. | |
| Recoll. Sea-Wanderer 213: We laid in a stack of cheese and 'soft tack,' and some whisky. | |
| (con. 1860s) Recollections of a Private 8: We were marched to barracks, dignified by the name of ‘Soldiers’ Retreat,’ where a half loaf of ‘soft-tack,’ as we had already begun to call wheat bread, was issued with a piece of ‘salt junk.’. | |
| Shellback 267: Perhaps you’d like soft tack and roast turkey? |
2. (Aus.) a soft drink, as opposed to hard liquor.
| Dead Bird (Sydney) 4 Jan. 2/4: A certain gentleman vho derives an income from the soft tack business has lately taken unto himself a young bride. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 13 Dec. 17/2: ‘I never thort ter see yer as bad as this; but, give it a name, we has plenty soft tack fer them as likes it.’ I feel mean an’ narked like, but I keeps the brake down agin liquor an’ takes limejooce corjal, an’ arskes M’Taggart to ‘name ’is poison.’. | |
| Rigby’s Romance (1921) Ch. vii: 🌐 Come and have a drink of soft tack before I go. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Aug. 47/2: Afterwards, when Bill suggests beer, I says I’ve chucked it, an’ I goes out an’ gets soft tack. |
teetotal, abstaining from alcohol .
![[Ind]](/static/img/flags/ind.png "India") | Civil & Milit. Gaz. (Lahore) 18 Oct. 4/3: I’ve gone on the tack Bill, since April / That’s news. | |
| ‘Army Slang’ in Regiment 8 Aug. 293/3: Staid old soldiers, many of whom had been ‘on the tack’ [...] ‘broke out’ and got ‘gloriously’ drunk. | |
| diary 19 Nov. 🌐 Went on the tack for an indefinite period. | |
| Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 7: On the tack: To abstain from alcohol. | |
| Glorious Heresies 118: ‘I’m in here on the tack because that’s a hell of a lot easier for the State to deal with’. |