poke n.2
1. stolen property.
| , , | ![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Sl. Dict. |
| Londinismen (2nd edn). |
2. (US) a wallet, a purse.
| [ | | Hye way to the Spyttel House Biiii: Mighty beggars with theyr pokes and croutches]. |
| [ | | Introduction of Knowledge (1870) 181: I haue money in my pooke]. |
| [ | | Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Poke a Bag, Sack, or Pocket. To buy a Pig in a Poke, or unsight or unseen. To carry your Passions in your Pocket, or smother your Passions]. |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Clockmaker I 44: What is it that ‘fetters’ the heels of a young country, and hangs like a ‘poke’ around its neck? | |
| Liverpool Mercury 14 Jan. 38/2: ‘He could wire a man of his poke’. | |
| Vocabulum 27: The badger got under the doss, and frisked the bloke’s pokes of two centuries and a half, and then bounced the flat till he mizzled. | |
| Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 5/2: We had not ‘worked’ it long before the ‘fly-cops’ were out in quest of us, owing to the many ‘pokes nailed’. | |
| Memphis Dly Appeal (TN) 12 Mar. 3/3: ‘I slung my hook’ and ‘collared his poke’. | |
| ‘The Cock and The Bull’ Works (1901) 111: I [...] clapt it i’ my poke. | |
![[Scot]](/static/img/flags/sco.png "Scotland") | Dundee Courier 12 Feb. 7/5: Billy’s been home [...] after bringing three pokes, give stooks, and a roll of sweet (tobacco). | |
| Jottings from Jail 24: Kit, from 7 dials, remanded innocent on 2 charges of pokes, only out 2 weeks for a Drag, expects to get fullied or else chucked. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 17 Aug. 3/7: He dropped the loot in his own private ‘poke’. | |
| Confessions of a Detective 202: I drew the honey from his poke, fifty quid it was. | |
| Truth (Perth) 1 Oct. 4/7: When they talk about ‘the old / Pot-an’-pan,’ / You will tumble that they mean / The ‘old man,’ / Who’s perhaps a ‘bonser bloke,’ / Who can nimbly ‘prig a poke’ / Or ‘can stand in any joke’ / You may plan. | |
| Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1926) 192: Dig down into your poke, kid. | |
| Keys to Crookdom 42: One of these men, the most skilled, is called a ‘wire’ or ‘tool,’ and it is he who actually ‘lifts’ the ‘poke’ of the victim. | |
| Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 8: Poke: Purse. | |
| in By Himself (1974) 311: A thief had broken into my tent and tried to roll me for my poke. | |
| ‘Sing Sing Sweeney’ in Crack Detective Jan. 🌐 I saw she was in some kinda trouble and so I just slips over and puts some dough in her poke. | |
| Look Long Upon a Monkey 76: He’d had a whale of a time [...] flashing money about, nigger-rich, and the wide boys had spotted him, coshed him and rolled him for his poke. | |
| Pimp 36: A walking, living, round balloon with a fat ‘poke’. | |
| Signs of Crime 197: Poke See Poggler [i.e. purse or wallet]. | |
| (con. 1940s–60s) ‘Bill Burroughs’ in Eve. Sun Turned Crimson (1998) 152: Searching for the wallet — or poke, as Phil referred to it. | |
| From Bondage 232: I got a fiver in my wallet. I got five bucks in my poke. | |
| At End of Day (2001) 123: This would mean I’d go up about four pay grades, plus a lot more in the pension poke. | |
| ‘Carny Lingo’ in http://goodmagic.com 🌐 The operator might have peeked an especially attractive poke. |
3. a bag of food handed out to a beggar.
| ‘Last Man’ Works (1862) I 242: I did not like that strange beggar man, / He look’d so up at the heavens. / Anon he shook out his empty poke; / ‘There’s the crumbs,’ saith he, ‘for the ravens!’. | |
| Aus. Sl. Dict. 59: Poke, a bag. | |
| ‘Dialect Words and Phrases from West-Central West Virginia’ in AS II:8 362: Put his lunch in a paper poke today. | |
| Tramp-Royal on the Toby 69: I opened the big poke of tucker which I had been presented with. |
4. (Irish/US) a cone-shaped bag, esp. for sweets or chips, or an ice-cream cornet; thus poke man, an ice-cream seller; poke van, an ice-cream van.
| ‘Words from Northwest Arkansas’ in DN III:i 81: ‘I want a poke of goobers.’ [Ibid.] 90: poke, n. Bag. ‘The sugar’s in that paper poke.’. | |
| ‘An Eastern Kentucky Dialect Word-List’ in DN III vii 539: poke, n. A paper bag. | |
| Travels of Tramp-Royal 243: The big poke of jujubes. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Come Day – Go Day n.p.: They emerged again onto the footpaths, carrying four penny, brown paper pokes of chips . | |
| Cockney 115: Haricot beans, dried peas, rice, and such commodities, were weighed out and served in paper ‘pokes’. | |
| Campus Sl. Oct. | |
| Indep. 1 Nov. 7: His standard diet of a ‘poke’ of chips fits the stereotype of the working-class Glaswegian. |
5. a roll of banknotes, money in general.
| ‘Prison Dict.’ in AS VIII:3 (1933) 30/2: POKE. 1. Purse or wallet. 2. Jack. | |
| You Can’t Win (2000) 156: My hand was on the big fat ‘poke’. | |
| (con. 1910s) Behind The Green Lights 165: Oh, I’ve got a poke (a roll of money) here that I want to give to the lamister. | |
| Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 8: Poke: Money in pocket. | |
| Duke 60: I was making my poke too. | |
| Crazy Kill 79: After I grabbed that poke I was running so fast I didn’t have time to see nothing. | |
| Hy Lit’s Unbelievable Dict. of Hip Words 30: poke – Bread, paper, another word for money. | |
 | Show Business Laid Bare 144: [D]oorway copulation led by the ladies who then slug, beat up, then rob, and occasionally even kill the male customer, especially if he’s got a poke—that is, some money. | |
| ‘Ebonics’ 🎵 Your bankroll is your poke. | |
| Awaydays 62: ‘I’ve got poke’ [...] He pulled out a thin fan of newish fivers, about sixty or seventy quid. | |
| ‘Carny Lingo’ in http://goodmagic.com 🌐 Poke — A carny’s or mark’s ‘stash’ of money. |
6. (US Und.) a variety of confidence trick.
| Big Con 303: The poke. 1. A method of tying up the mark for the pay-off or the rag. The outsideman and the mark find a pocket-book containing a large amount of money, a code-cipher, newspaper clippings describing the owner’s phenomenal success in either gambling or races or in stock-market investment, and race tickets or stock receipts. |
In compounds
(UK/US Und.) a pickpocket.
| Sporting Times (London) 15 Feb. 3/1: ‘I said a poke-getter as plain as I could patter’. | |
| Confessions of a Detective 8: My ability to successfully cope with a fan-tan den in Doyer Street, or pinch a poke-getter at the Ferry. | |
| Adventures of Jimmie Dale (1918) I vi: No one yet had ever questioned the Wowzer’s claim to [...] being the most dexterous and finished ‘poke getter’ in the United States! | |
| White Moll 131: Crooks, pokegetters, shillabers and lags. |
(US und.) a wallet kept in the easily accessible hip pocket (rather than in the harder to pickpocket inner one).
| Jackson Dly News (MS) 1 Apr. 7/3: Crook Chatter [...] ‘When one considers the ridiculous ease with which a wallet in a man’s hip pocket can be stolen, it is quite appropriate to dub it a “sucker poke”’. |
(UK Und.) a pickpocket.
| Romany Life 247: The light-fingered gentry with the mackintoshes, over one arm, who gently taps your pocket and marks you with a chalk [...] to indicate to his friend the tea-leaf or poke-lifter, the true pickpocket, where the money lies. | |
| ‘Good Luck is No Good’ in Federal Agent Nov. 🌐 The mugg wasn’t in his class. [...] Probably a pokepicker or some small-time bumolo like that. |
1. food given to a tramp who begs at the door.
| ‘The Road’ in Jack London Reports (1970) 311–21: When at a back door, eatables are given them wrapped in paper, they call it a ‘poke-out’ or ‘hand-out.’. | |
| Road 1: I could ‘throw my feet’ with the next one when it came to ‘slamming the gate’ for a ‘poke-out’. | |
| Snare of the Road 45: Did you think me capable of scoffing a poke-out you have bummed from someone else? | |
| Adventures of a Scholar Tramp 14: Her parcel is known in Hoboland as [...] a ‘poke-out’. | |
| (con. 1890) ‘A Convention Song’ in Hobo’s Hornbook 27: Now here I am in Omaha, / A hungry, ring-tailed bum, / Tooting ringers for poke outs, / When what I want is slum. [Ibid.] ‘The Sweet Potato Mountains’ 90: The Sweet Potato Mountains [...] Where poke-outs grow on bushes. | |
| (con. 1920s–40s) in Rebel Voices. |
2. (S.Afr. prison) a bag of tobacco or similar smuggled into prison.
![[SA]](/static/img/flags/sa.png "South Africa") | Cold Stone Jug (1981) II 48: This convict would again take half the tobacco for himself and pass on the remainder to some other convict, who would also help himself out of the ‘poke’. |
3. (US) food cooked outdoors; a gathering to eat such food; a long trek that involves eating outdoors.
| , | | DAS 399/2: Poke-out, [...] 2 An outdoor dinner cooked over wood or charcoal; a gathering for the purpose of preparing and eating such a meal; any long hike or camping trip which includes such meals. |
1. the last pig in a litter.
| Slanguage. |
2. the last child of a family.
| Slanguage. |
SE in slang uses
In phrases
(Scot.) to be dismissed from one’s job.
| UK Parliament Commons 28 Nov. 🌐 If there are any pig-in-a-poke policies, the recession policies of the Government are the pig and 768,000 people have got the poke. |