Green’s Dictionary of Slang

the day of execution.

1768		Kentish Gaz. 11 June 1/3: He has frequently observed, the collar-days at court have happened at the same time as the collar-days at Tyburn.
c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions .
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn).
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1812–82		B.M. Carew Life and Adventures.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
c.1850		Duncombe New and Improved Flash Dict.

of a coach horse, uphill work, i.e. the horse is pulling against the collar that secures him to the vehicle.

1876

‘Some Road Slang Terms’ in Malet Annals of the Road 393: 3. Of a Coach Collar work...Uphill work.

to bring under control, to persuade to a given course of action.

1879

London Life 30 Aug. 5/2: He was obliged to employ a "whipper-in" to bring his numerous friends to the collar.

to behave in the required and socially sanctioned manner.

1874

‘Old Calabar’ Won in a Canter II 112: ‘He would, I believe, have made her a good husband, and she a fond loving wife; those high-spirited girls generally come to the collar quicker than the others’.

(UK Und./police) to be arrested.

1941		V. Davis Phenomena in Crime 249: How did he get his collar felt?
1950		P. Hoskins No Hiding Place! 190/2: He had his Collar Felt. He was interrogated by the police.
1962		R. Cook Crust on its Uppers 24: The slag, who start grassing [...] soon as they get their collar felt.
1970		T. Parker Frying-Pan 151: It’d be stupid to get my collar felt again in my mid-fifties, wouldn’t it?
1985		J. Sullivan ‘Watching the Girls go by’ Only Fools and Horses [TV script] Lucky not to get yer collar felt!
2005		C. Hill Coming Out Fighting 153: He hadn’t had his collar felt and was beginning to believe that maybe he wouldn’t after all.
2012		(con. 1980s) I. Welsh Skagboys 354: You’ll do serious time if ya get yer collar felt for that [i.e. heroin smuggling].

employed.

1867		Scot. Journal 39/1: A workman on tramp will, if he is tolerably well known in the trade, and if he have, when in collar, shown a disposition to assist those who were out, often be kept among his former shopmates [F&H].
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 85/2: Collar (London). In work. Said of a horse when he gets into swing, or perhaps when be begins to get wet with work. Applied to human beings when in work, and therefore making money. ‘Joe’s in collar.’.

1. unemployed.

1840		Bon-Ton Gaz. 7 Mar. 57/1: I saw some half a score of Bonnets out of collar mournfully chanting ‘The light of other days has faded’ .
1840		Courier (Hobart, Tas.) 27 Oct. 3/1: [advert, from UK source] A decent allowance made to seedy swells, tea-kettle purgers, head rollers, and Flunkeys out of Collar.
1857		‘Ducange Anglicus’ Vulgar Tongue 45: A decent allowance made to Seedy Swells, Tea Kettle Purgers, Head Robbers, and Flunkeys out of Collar.
1866		Letters by an Odd Boy 160: I make the acquaintance of what I should call an unemployed journeyman tailor; but he is a ‘steel-bar driver out of collar’.
1879		London Life 31 May 7/2: I linger round a well-known haunt, ‘out of collar,’ with my coat buttoned round a figure which [...] you can almost see through.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 11 Mar. 8/1: I was stiff and out of collar [...] so I says to myself, ‘I’ll go to the Stockton mine’.
1903		Bulletin (Sydney) 23 July 34/1: Writer knows a man who is never in any billet more than three months, but he is no sooner out of the collar than he slips into it again, and meantime, he is collecting a lot of valuable experience.
1914		Truth (Melbourne) 10 Jan. 11/5: The girls mistook the other for a frisky potentate from the backblocks, but in reality he was a musician out of collar.
1964		J.A. Lee Shiner Slattery 25: But for the coves that’s out of collar, mates, there’s hunger in the air.

2. (Aus.) disinherited.

1901

Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 3 July 1/6: Till the old man takes a wife, & / Then is chances they seemed gone, / [...] / Out of collar, all forlorn.

(US) to arrest, to take charge of.

1872		G.P. Burnham Memoirs of the US Secret Service 99: Kennock was the man who sprung the trap and ‘put the collar’ upon Dow.
1927		C. Coe Me – Gangster 26: You can’t put the collar on me!
1929		C. Coe Hooch! 125: They [...] put the collar on the boys.
1952		Lannoy & Masterson ‘Teen-age Hophead Jargon’ AS XXVII:1 29: PUT A COLLAR ON HIM, phr. To arrest a drug peddler.
1959		W. Brown Teen-Age Mafia 131: They’d be satisfied with putting the collar on the two other guys.
1980		T. Lewis GBH 5: ‘He put the collar on Arthur at quarter to seven’.

(Aus.) an easy job.

1920

Ade Hand-made Fables 113: Adelbert Justitian did not harmonize with a Soft Collar.

(US) family style, informal, esp. of a restaurant or café.

1926		J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 58: The Comique was an old-time collar-and-elbow variety show.
1926		N. Klein ‘Hobo Lingo’ in AS I:12 650: Collar and shoulder style — where everything is placed on the table and one helps himself.
1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 53: Collar and Shoulder Style. – The system adopted at many boarding-houses and construction camps, where the food is placed on the table in front of the boarders, not served to them individually, and where each man serves himself by a fast dive at the platter.
1933		Ersine Und. and Prison Sl. 28: collar and elbow joint. A restaurant in which all patrons sit close together at one long table.
1945		F.H. Hubbard Railroad Avenue 338: Collar and Elbow Joint – Boardinghouse. (There isn’t too much room at the dinner table).

(US prison) a collar and tie.

1918

H. Simon ‘Prison Dict.’ in AS VIII:3 (1933) 25/2: Collar & Hames. Collar and tie —i n reference to the swell clothes one wore or is going to wear on the outside.

a masculine lesbian; also attrib.

1941		G. Legman ‘Lang. of Homosexuality’ Appendix VII in Henry Sex Variants.
1965		Guild Dict. Homosexual Terms 8: collar-and-tie (n.): The female homosexual who wears mannish clothes.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.
1982		Maledicta VI:1+2 (Summer/Winter) 133: Here are some obsolete or nearly obsolete terms which careless lexicographers continue to list as current […] collar and tie.
1989		J. Morton Lowspeak 42: Collar and tie brigade – lesbians.

see cuffs and collars under cuff n.²

hard, strenuous work.

[1828		American Farmer (Baltimore, MD) 17 Oct. 241/1: It [i.e. pulling a stage-wagon] is all collar work; nothing is gained from the momentum of the dragged mass, which, the instant the pull ceases, stands still].
1873		Sl. Dict. 125: collar work is any very hard work, from the expression among drivers. Any uphill journey is said to be all ‘collar work’ for the horses.
1883		Daily Tel. 3 July 2/1: The bald patches on their shoulders testified to their intimate acquaintance with collar work and tugging on stoney roads with heavy loads behind them [F&H].
1914		Liverpool Daily Post 26 Oct. 5/9: [headline] Austria Doing the Collar-Work. Sacrified for Germans.
1927		Yorks. Eve. Post 25 Mar. 11/2: Now, as old farm horses themselves would say, it is all ‘collar work’ — harness collars, cart saddles [...] that are a weight to lift about, and stuff stuff to work a needle on.

(US police) arrests made by the police for the purpose of generating overtime pay.

1979		New York mag. 28 Feb. 32: ‘Cops were making what we call “collars for dollars,”’ Merola explains — arrests that entailed the automatic overtime of appearing in court.
1982		N.B. Johnston Legal Process 77: [T]he desire for overtime pay through court appearances (‘collars for dollars’) .
1996		(con. mid-1960s) J. Lardner Crusader 337: Off-duty arrests, and arrests made close to the end of an officer’s shift, had also been discouraged, lest cops be tempted to make arrests solely to generate paid overtime—collars for dollars, as they were called.
2016		Barer et al. Betrayal in Blue 176: When drug money wasn’t readily available on the streets, cops employed schemes, called ‘Collars-for-Dollars,’ that ratcheted up their overtime hours.
2021		J.M. Pollock Ethical Dilemmas 78: ‘Collars for dollars’ [...] refers to the alleged practice of arresting individuals on weak or nonexistent evidence solely to earn overtime pay by creating the need for court appearances.

(US police) an arrest of one who pays protection money to the police, made either to induce extra payment or to disguise the corrupt relationship.

1913		Curran Report 8: [I]t has been customary for [police]to make arrests at intervals and then, after receiving additional money demanded by them, to give only such testimony as would necessarily result in a discharge or acquittal. [...] [T]his sort of arrest was known [...] as a ‘friendly collar’.
1955		Helfand Report 85: [R]eports further described so-called friendly or courtesy arrests made by plainclothesmen for the purpose solely of bolstering their records. These arrests were spurious and almost always resulted in an acquittal.

(US) to perform adequately, to come up to expectations.

1898

E.N. Westcott David Harum 195: I seen right off that you was goin’ to fill your collar, fur’s the work was concerned.

(US) to start working, to work hard.

2002

H.M. Lewis ‘Peter Robidoux’s Everything Store’ at LewisMicroPublishing.com 🌐 With me there was no choice in the matter. Either join the gang or get in the collar and work. I chose the collar and have been pulling ever since. I washed dishes and did all kinds of work until I had saved enough money to go on.

to put on airs.

1909

J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era.

1. to stay hard at work, or to make someone else stay hard at work.

1838		‘Paul Pry’ Oddities of London Life II 271: Two omnibuses were observed racing one against the other, and the drivers lashing their unfortunate cattle to keep them up to the collar.
1861		T. Hughes Tom Brown at Oxford (1880) 393: Hardy kept him pretty up to the collar, and he passed [...] and was fairly placed at the college examinations.
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 17 Aug. 6/2: His brother-in-law Murphy is training Tim and says he’ll make him stand up to the collar.

2. to be overwhelmed by one’s work.

1923

J. Manchon Le Slang.

(Irish) to put in very great difficulties, to be stretched to the limit.

1879		C.J. Kickham Knocknagow 543: An’ begob he put Mat to the pin uv his collar the same day.
1902		Waterford Standard 16 Apr. 3/1: [H]e was put to the pin of his collar in order to find room for the people coming in.
1913		Londonderry Sentinel 30 Aug. 50/4: M’Hugh was put the pin of his collar to preserve the peace.
1924		Derry Jrnl 24 Mar. 8/2: [I]t would put the most imaginative optimist to the pin of his collar to prove what advantage would have accrued.
1939		Catholic Standard (Dublin) 27 Jan. 2/3: Even Job, renowned for his patience, would have been put to the pin of his collar to keep under control.
1947		Waterford Standard 30 Aug. 4/5: Carrick-on-Suir, who was seriously fancied from the start, was [...] put to the pin of his collar to win.
1961		D. Behan Teems of Times and Happy Returns 39: Kathleen gave birth to another boy, on the twenty-first January 1925, and Brendan would have been put to the pin of his nineteenth month collar to withstand the charm of a new baby.
1966		P. Boyle At Night All Cats are Grey 66: He makes bloody few mistakes as far as needling for drink is concerned, even the Scroggy-man would be put to the pin of his collar to best him.
1996		RTÉ TV The Week in Politics 12 Oct. n.p.: Fianna Fáil has 69 TDs, and even at that we are put to the pin of our collar to attend all these committee meetings [BS].

in terms of crime, middle-class, non-violent.

1980

‘Dan Kavanaugh’ Duffy 7: It took a week's hard work to fill the crime page of the Guildford Advertiser, and even then it was mainly soft-collar, middle-class stuff: company frauds, menopausal shoplifting, dog licence evasion .