Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to cheat, to hoax, to swindle; thus bubbleable adj., gullible.

1664		Etherege Love In A Tub II iii: I believe he’s gone down to receive money; ’Twere an excellent design to bubble him.
1673		‘Letter from a Missionary Bawd’ in Carpenter Verse in English from Tudor & Stuart Eng. (2003) 424: Her Bubled Lord ne’re thought of a surprize.
1674		C. Cotton Compleat Gamester 12: If the Winner be bubbleable, they will insinuate themselves into his company.
1674		Head Canting Academy (2nd edn) 73: He becomes an excellent Proficient in all sorts of Gameing, by which he endeavours to bubble all he meets.
1683		Whores Rhetorick 168: I should love to bubble such conceited Coxcombs.
1695		Congreve Love for Love V i: Ouns! Cullied, bubbled, jilted, woman-bobbed at last – I have not patience.
1705		Vanbrugh Confederacy I i: dick: Who is this good Woman, Flippanta? flip: A Gin of all Trades; an old daggling Cheat that hobbles from House to House to Bubble Ladies of their Mony.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy I 5: Adieu to the Knight, / Was bubled [sic] last Night.
1720		in Ebsworth Roxburghe Ballads (1893) VII:1 211: [title] The Bubblers Bubbled; or Devil take the Hindmost.
1733		Cibber Harlot’s Progress 9: I’ll bubble, I’ll blind, Make Fools of Mankind.
1740		Amorous Miller’s Garland 6: She bubbles him to purpose, / he spends all his Coin.
1751		Smollett Peregrine Pickle (1964) 572: He knew how to take care of his concerns, and would not suffer either him or them to bubble him out of one shilling.
1766		Midnight Spy (c.1929) 76: [He] strips him of his cash [...] and dismisses him with as polite an air, as a whore of fashion her bubbled cully.
1777		Sheridan Trip to Scarborough II i: That’s the properest place – (aside) – to bubble him out of his money.
1788		J. O’Keeffe Prisoner at Large 22: Master and I bubbled by such clowns as Muns and Jack Connor.
1798		Sporting Mag. Dec. XIII 173/2: To bubble him, like a lying knave, / With three such damn’d humbugs.
1808		G. Andrewes A Stranger’s Guide or Frauds of London 10: The shame of being thought to be bubbled, and exposed to the town, frequently prevents gentlemen from making use of the statute provided in such cases.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1821		R. Waln Hermit in America on Visit to Phila. 2nd series 29: I hate to be bubbled.
1829		Vidocq Memoirs (trans. W. McGinn) I 41: Believe me, matters pass in the drawing room as they do at the tavern — there they bubble [...] the merchant, who in the morning whilst at his desk would think it a crime to rob you of an hour’s interest, would very quietly cheat you at the gaming-table in the evening.
1830		Lytton Paul Clifford III 123: We sport horses on the race-course, and look big at the multitude we have bubbled.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict.
1844		Thackeray Barry Lyndon (1905) 217: There was no set of men in Europe who knew how to rob more genteelly, to bubble a stranger, to bribe a jockey.
1859		‘Scene in a London Flash-Panny’ Matsell Vocabulum 99: ‘Stubble your red rag,’ answered a good-looking young fellow. ‘Bell had better flash her dibs than let you bubble her out of them.’.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1882		Daily News in Ware (1909) 51/2: The well-meaning ladies of England, when they subscribed for that monument, had not the faintest notion of what they were doing. They were indeed ‘bubbled’, to use a phrase of Queen Anne’s time.
1889		Gent.’s Mag. June 598: Towards the end of the century [xvii] a person easily gulled or bubbled was known as a ‘caravan,’ but earlier the term ‘rook,’ which is now restricted to a cheat or sharper, appears to have been applied to the person cheated.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 12: Bubble, to cheat, as land and mining booms.

2. (Aus.) to spoil, to ruin.

1986

R.G. Barrett Real Thing 178: I’ve sweetened everything up for Reg and his girl and bubbled the rort for myself.