file v.1
1. to pick a pocket.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | ‘Farewell to the Tower-bottles’ in Works (1869) III 127: ’Tis know you have been stabb’d, thrown in the Thames / And he that fil’d you beaten. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | ‘Of the Budge’ Canting Academy (1674) 12: And when that we have filed him / Perhaps of half a Job. | |
| Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Do you Bulk and I’ll File, if you’ll jostle him, I will Pick his Pocket. | |
| Compleat and Humorous Account of Remarkable Clubs (1756) 270: She is to be candidly taught [...] the dark Mysteries of Harlotry; how to File a drunken Cully; sweeten an old Leacher; wheedle a constant Customer. | |
| ‘Budg and Snudg Song’ in Musa Pedestris (1896) 31: But when that we come out agen / and the merry hick we meet / We file off with his cole / As he pikes along the street. | |
| New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698]. | |
| , , , | | Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698]. |
| ‘A Cant Song’ Muses Delight 177: We fil’d the rum codger and plumpt the queer cull, / And away we went to the ken boozie. | |
| ‘Come All You Buffers Gay’ in Musa Pedestris (1896) 53: For if the cull should be down / And catch you a fileing his bag / Then at the Old Bailey you’re found, / And d—n you, he’ll tip you the lag. | |
| , , | | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. |
| Lex. Balatronicum. | |
| Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Bell’s Life in Sydney 17 Mar. 3/3: It has become very fashionable to evince ‘great sympathy’ lor pickpockets, and gentlemen who ‘file’. |
2. (UK Und.) to cheat, to rob.
| Catterpillers of this Nation Anatomized 4: If he chance to espy a (Ioseph) cloak, hang in a shop any thing likely to be fil’d, it will go hard if it escape him. | |
| Discoveries (1774) 6: Next Morning we left our Company and went for West-chester on the File (A Cant Word for Cheating) : We stayed on Purpose to rob a Pack-Horse. | |
| Eng. Spy II 6: You’ll grind the flats again, / And file the sharps unto the grain. |
3. to break into.
| ‘Frisky Moll’s Song’ in Harlequin Sheppard 22: He broke thro’ all Rubbs in the Whitt, / And chiv’d his Darbies in twain / But fileing of a Rumbo Ken, / My Boman is snabbled again. |
In compounds
a pickpocket.
 | Wandring Whores Complaint 4: The sixth was a File-cloy that no one Hick spares, / And the seventh was a Budg to track up the staires . | |
| ‘Black Procession’ in Musa Pedestris (1896) 38: The sixth is a file-cly that not one cully spares, / The seventh a budge to track softly upstairs. | |
| Regulator 19: A File-Cly, alias Pick-Pocket. | |
| Hist. of Highwaymen &c. 193: She enter’d herself into the Society of Divers, otherwise call’d File-clyers, Cut-purses, or Pick-pockets. | |
| Canting Academy, or the Pedlar’s-French Dict. 114: Pick-pocket A File or a Cly. | |
| Scoundrel’s Dict. 30: The Sixth is a File-coy [sic] that not one Hick spares. | |
| , , | | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: File, file cloy, or bungnipper, a pickpocket. |
| Lex. Balatronicum. | |
| Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. | |
| ‘Thief-Catcher’s Prophecy’ in Pedlar’s Pack of Ballads 143: The sixth is a File-cly, that not one cully spares. |
(UK Und.) pickpocketing.
| Hist. of Jonathan Wild 4: The Gentlemen of the Kid-Lay, File, Lay, [i.e. file lay] Sneak and Buttock. | |
| Life of Jonathan Wild (1784) IV 258: I am committed for the filing-lay, man, and we shall be both nubbed together. | |
| Discoveries (1774) 30: The great Trade or knowing Art called Filing; that is, picking Pockets. |
In phrases
(UK Und.) to pick a pocket; thus cly-filing n.
| Wandering-Whores Complaint 2: If I meet a Cull in Moor-fields, I can give him leave to dive in my Placket whilst I Fyle his Cly, at which work my Fingers are as nimble as an Eele. | |
| Eng. Rogue IV 152: Which Arts are divided into that of High-Padding, Low-Padding, Cloy-Filing, Bung-Nipping, Prancers Prigging, Duds-Lifting, Rhum-Napping, Cove-Cuffing, Mort-Trapping, Stamp-Flashing, Ken-Milling, Jerk the Naskin. | |
| Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Filed a Cly of a Loge, or Scout, c. Pickt a Pocket or a Watch. | |
| Compleat and Humorous Account of Remarkable Clubs (1756) 294: Water-lane Divers, alias Pick-Pockets, contrive new stratagems to amuse unwary Passengers, till they File the Cly. | |
| Lives of Most Noted Highway-men, etc. I 255: Filing a Cly, which is, picking Pockets of Watches, Money, Books or Wipes, that’s to say, Handkerchiefs. | |
| New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698]. | |
| Hist. of Highwaymen &c. n.p.: [as cit. 1714]. | |
| Bloody Register I 125: He [...] soon quitted that smutty employment [i.e. chimney-sweeping] for a cleanlier trade, i.e. Filing a Cly (picking pockets) in which he is reported to have had a very remarkable dexterity. | |
| , , | | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. |
| Lex. Balatronicum. |
(Can.) to grab hold of, to seize.
| DSUE (1984) 390/2: — 1932. |
SE in slang uses
In phrases
(US Und.) to arrest; to charge.
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Rivers of Blood 119: In 1960 over 19,000 juveniles were taken into custody and just over 900 were filed on. | |
| Thief’s Primer 92: Until a few years ago Texas didn’t have a tool law. They could catch you with all the burglary tools in the world and they couldn’t file on you for having them. | |
| Because the Night 30: ‘[M]aybe two months ago, right before those A.B.C. cocksuckers filed on me. You a cop?’. |