bodkin n.2
a person who is wedged between two others, esp. when there is room for only the original couple; thus sit bodkin or ride bodkin, for a coach passenger to ride wedged between two fellows when there is insufficient room for three abreast.
Fancies Act IV: Where but two lie in a bed, you must be Bodkin, bitch-baby must ye? | ||
Loves of the Triangles 182: While the pressed bodkin, punched and squeezed to death, Sweats in the mid-most place [F&H]. | ||
Shabby Genteel Story (1853) 82: Carry must go bodkin; but she ain’t very big. | ||
Kate Coventry (1865) 111: I would rather give Brilliant a good ‘bucketing’ [...] than go bodkin in a chariot. | ||
, , | Sl. Dict. 79: A small or young person, sitting in the centre, betwen two others, in a carriage, is said ‘to ride bodkin.’ Amongst sporting men, applied to a person who takes his turn between the sheets on alternate nights, when the hotel has twice as many visitors as it can comfortably lodge. | |
Thrown Together II 62: The three called a hansom outside, and Cecily [...] sat bodkin . | ||
Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 1: Anyone sitting between two others in a cab or carriage is said ‘to ride bodkin’. |