Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to spend money.

1890–1904

Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

2. (UK Und.) to lighten gold coins by immersing them in acid; thus sweater n., one who practises such deception; sweating n., this practice.

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: sweating. A mode of diminishing the gold coin, practiced chiefly by the Jews, who corrode it with aqua regia.
c.1794		‘Peter Pindar’ ‘Bozzy and Piozzi’ Works I (1812) 373: That Bad Shilling is of Johnsons making, His each vile Sixpence that the World hath cheated, And his, tsweat likehe art that every Guinea sweated?
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785].
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1830		N. Ames Mariner’s Sketches 124: A solitary Spanish dollar [...] having probably undergone a ‘sweating’ or partial fusion in a Chinese crucible before it was returned into the hands of a [...] white man.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1870		W.W. Fowler Ten Years In Wall Street 42: Making the values which pass through his hands perspire golden drops, just as the Jews clip and sweat the coin they handle.
1875		Jevons Money and Mech. of Exch. 115: No one now actually refuses any gold money in retail business, so that the sweater, if he exists at all, has all the opportunities he can desire [F&H].
1886		A. Pinkerton Thirty Years a Detective 456: Gold coin is tampered with [...] One operation consists in ‘sweating’ or jingling the coin together in a buckskin bag, by which five per cent can be made.
1925		E. Jervis 25 Years in Six Prisons 48: I had a man through my hands sentenced to fourteen years’ penal servitude for sweating gold in 1904.

3. to pawn.

c.1816

‘The Night Before Larry Was Stretched’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 79: They sweated their duds till they riz it.

4. to remove some of the contents of.

1820

Simpson’s Journal in Hudson Bay Record Society I (1938) n.p.: Mr. Perring’s Keg is always at the service of his friends, and they sweat it unmercifully.

5. to deprive someone of something; thus sweating n. and adj.

1847		J.E. Walsh Ireland Sixty Years Ago (1885) 19: They passed the house of a publican, on Ormond quay, they determined to amuse themselves by ‘sweating,’ i.e., making him give up all his fire-arms.
1891		A. Day Mysterious Beggar 265: We might just as well sweat him for five thousand as for five hundred.
1938		X. Herbert Capricornia (1939) 306: You lousy, sweatin’ old shyster you.

6. (UK Und.) of pickpockets etc., to subject a person or place to criminal activities; thus sweating n.

1865

Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 17/1: They had been down from the ‘start’ only a day or two, and from what we had heard, had given the place a ‘sweating’.

7. to defraud, to extract money, usu. through menaces or violence.

1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn) 232: sweat to extract money from a person, to ‘bleed’; thus sweating n.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1874		‘A.P.’ [Arthur Pember] Mysteries and Miseries 19: ‘[T]hey thoroughly sweat a poor man, and make believe they don’t. Well, now, sir, maybe I sell a man a drink of bad whisky, but, then, he knows that when he buys it; so that’s fair and straight’.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 24 Jan. 4/4: These bodies of working men can [...] appreciate the true significance of the determination to make the men work at home, and can perceive whether this truly tends to facilitate ‘sweating’ [in] competition men thus individualised and separated – competition which could not be induced were the men congregated at work in the factories.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 83: Sweat, to extract money from a person.

8. to squander money, whether one’s own or someone else’s.

1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn) 232: sweat [...] to squander riches.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1908		Sun. Times (Perth) 17 May 1/1: Kiddies in the puppy stage can be seen nightly doing in their dough [and] as long as they sweat their salaries devil a bit cares the proprietor.

9. (Aus.) to borrow (usu. a horse) without its owner’s permission.

1866		Sydney Morn. Herald 3 Oct. 5/2: At the Quarter Sessions to-day [...] Charles Jobson, for illegally riding (or sweating) a horse, one year.
1867		Sydney Morn. Herald 2 Apr. 3/2: ‘[S]weating’ [...] simply means seizing on a horse that may be found astray, and riding him till a reward is offered for him, when after a show of search for him he is returned to tho owners, and the reward quietly pocketed.
1870		Maitland Mercury (NSW) 1 Nov. 4/5: Sergeant Meagher has started to Narrabri, with a prisoner for Tamworth, James Lynch, who lately received three months for ‘sweating’ a horse.
1875		Glen Innes Examiner (NSW) 10 Mar. 2/6: An inherent mania for galloping horses [...] becomes a leading vice, culminating in horse and cattle stealing. The first step generally begins with ‘sweating’ a neighbour's horse, or illegally riding; then comes the ‘fancy’ for a particular horse, without the necessary means at hand of making a purchase.
1884		Morn. Bulletin (Rockhampton, Qld) 2 Apr. 2/5: The other day John Perry, a man in the employ of John English, was sentenced [...] to six months imprisonment for ‘sweating’ a horse [...] The very next week, his master, the same John English, was charged with a similar offence — ‘sweating’ a horse belong ing to W. Pattison, of Rockhampton.
1895		Queanbeyan Age (NSW) 19 Oct. 2/5: The story about his being before the police court for ‘sweating’ a horse is quite true but, being a simpleton, he got into the trouble through another lad telling him the horse was his, and he might have a ride.
1901		Albury Banner & Wodonga Express (NSW) 25 Jan. 29/3: At the Yarrawonga, Police Court Patrick Burke proceeded against Patrick J. Woods for the offence known as ' sweating a horse.' [...] Mr Hargrave explained that the horse in question had strayed into defendant’s paddock, and that he was riding it about in search of its owner [etc].
1915		Gosford Times (NSW) 29 Jan. 17/4: ‘Sweating’ a Horse. Alfred Beckett, a youthful apprentice of the State Boys’ Farm [...] was caught in December whilst demonstrating the feasibility of stoney-broke individuals riding on horseback. It wasn’t his own horse, but that was merely a regrettable circumstance.
1923		Freeman’s Jrnl (Sydney) 14 June 12/1: To the uninitiated it may be explained that to ‘sweat’ a horse was to ‘borrow’ it, without the knowledge or sanction of the owner, and af ter riding it a great distance, abandon it to avoid the responsibility of being caught in possession.
1957		J. Greenway ‘Aus. Cattle Lingo’ in AS XXXIII:3 168: sweat a horse, v. phr. To steal a horse and ride it to the point of collapse.

10. (UK Und.) to melt down the solder that holds together an otherwise impenetrable strong-box.

1909

J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 237/2: Sweat (Thieves’). To unsolder a tin box by applying fire, or a blow.

11. (US Und.) to break up stolen high denomination notes into smaller, legal bills.

1952

C. Hamilton Men of the Und. 115: After they had ‘sweated’ the big notes down to one-dollar bills.