havey cavey adj.
1. higgledy-piggledy, confused, doubtful; thus on the havey-cavey, questioning, doubting.
![]() | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Havy Cavy. Shilly Shally. | |
![]() | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn) n.p.: Havy Cavy. Wavering, doubtful, shilly shally. | |
![]() | Lex. Balatronicum. | |
![]() | Iwanowna 231: Ever since then we have been, as one may say, in a havy-cavy way; neither one thing nor t’other. | |
![]() | Gloss. Provincial Words (rev. edn) 79: HAVY-CAVY, undetermined, wavering, (HABE CAVE) doubtful whether to accept or reject a thing. Nottingham. | |
![]() | Vocabulum 41: havey cavey Wavering; doubtful. | |
![]() | Sl. Dict. (1890). |
2. duplicitious; thus play havy-cavy, to play around.
![]() | Benedick in Arcady 61: Ye don’t look the sort o’ folk, when all’s said, to go playing havy-cavy with a body’s crops. | |
![]() | Mirage on the Amazon 6: I know that if there was any havy-cavy business going on in your marriage, you were the perpetrator, not my brother. | |
![]() | (con. 1820s) | Regency Companion 13: All manner of sly and havy-cavy methods were used in attempts to influence the Patronesses.