Green’s Dictionary of Slang

unrestrainedly, excessively, in a self-indulgent manner; also as adj.; thus dress large v., to dress in an ostentatious manner; play large v., to gamble heavily; talk large v., to boast.

1732		Harlot’s Progress 41: Comes a gruf Constable in charge / Of one who liv’d both loose and large.
1842		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 28 May n.p.: An English swell who has been cutting it quite large.
1848		‘Ned Buntline’ Mysteries and Miseries of N.Y. II 29: They noted the hundred marks upon the bills and saw that he intended to ‘play large’.
1892		Kipling ‘Tommy’ in Barrack-Room Ballads (1893) 147: An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit / Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
1896		Ade Artie (1963) 7: Puttin’ up the large, juicy con talk. [Ibid.] 91: You ought o’ heard some o’ the large blue language the old man got rid of.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Dec. 28/2: Benares they visited, but mostly ‘adjacent parts,’ where were no inquisitive white troops; ‘going large’ in many lal bazars; heard of in dák bungalows with female companions of divers races.
1922		Wodehouse Clicking of Cuthbert 89: Wonderful sense of power it gives you. I mean to go in pretty largely for that sort of thing in future.
1948		‘Josephine Tey’ Franchise Affair (1954) 212: ‘Rose could have very little chance of wearing a watch that the Staples people must quite often have seen on your wrist. It is much more likely that she was “large” with it in favour of her friend’.
1952		W. Winchell On Broadway 6 Aug. [synd. col.] India’s West Bengal, where Socony-Vacuum just hit it Large.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 50: Max Peltz coughed up large.
2003		N. Griffiths Stump 114: Comes into my friggin town givin it fuckin large about fuckin decline an all that shit.
2009		L. McIlvanney All the Colours 101: The UDA [...] flapped their lips, talking large about things they’d never done.
2017		V. McDermid Insidious Intent (2018) 213: ‘How’s Barbados?’ ‘We are loving it large’.