Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a synon. for syphilis or the plague, e.g. deuce on him, the deuce on it.

1651		T. Randolph Hey for Honesty I i: They say this same gaffer Phœbus is a good mountebank [...] But a deuce on him, it does not seem so.
1677		Otway Cheats of Scapin III. i: A dewce on’t.

2. a euph. for ‘the devil’, both lit. but more usu. fig. as deuce, the phr. ; note cit. 1830 is a pun on deuce n.¹ (1).

1812		‘Hector Bull-us’ Diverting Hist. of John Bull and Brother Jonathan 71: D---e if I don’t fight you.
1819		P. Egan Key to the Picture of the Fancy going to a Fight 30: Oh, sad is the heart that can say ‘the deuce take her’ / To fame.
1824		J. Wight Mornings in Bow St. 187: John Saunders [...] scampering away towards Kensington as if the deuce was in him.
1830		Thomas Tucker ‘Daniel Dab’ in Egan Bk of Sports (1832) 15: For if a tray of trades won’t win, / I think the deuce is in it.
1838		Coventry Standard 31 Aug. 2/5: She fetched me a deuce of a clip on the side of my face.
1853		R.S. Surtees Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour 244: Deuce a bite did I get before six.
1859		G.A. Sala Twice Round the Clock 116: But the high-towering Jehu of 9,009 cannot drive to the dominions of the deuce.
1869		Cork Examiner 1 Sept. 2/4: ‘What luck?’ he asked in an undoubted Cockney accent. ‘Nix,’ replied the gentleman [...] ‘did you do anything?’ ‘Deuce a bit — downey as hawks,’ was the answer.
1870		C.G. Leland ‘To a Friend Studying German’ in Hans Breitmann in Church 145: Mit Gott knows vot in vinegar / Und Deuce knows vot in rum.
1875		‘Aliph Cheem’ Lays of Ind (1905) 3: Vowing this was a deuce / Of a swell bobberee.
1882		Manchester Courier 9 Dec. 10/3: Well, by the deuce. Oh, but we’ve got ’em.
1884		‘Career of a Scapegrace’ in Leicester Chron. 17 May 12/1: ‘Deuce take the rats,’ said a voice.
1907		Lone Hand May 13: ‘Women want such a deuce of a lot’.
1913		T.A. Dorgan Daffydils 25 Jan. [synd. cartoon strip] The strikers [...] elected a committee to give the cop the deuce.

3. an inferior person, a ‘devil’.

1902		Ade Forty Modern Fables 181: I feel like a Discarded Deuce.
1905		H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 169: She made the fella look like a deuce.
1914		R. Lardner You Know Me Al (1984) 97: I am going to give it to her for New Year’s present and I guess that will make Allen feel like a dirty dooce.