catso n.
1. a rogue or rascal.
Every Man Out of his Humour II i: These be our nimble spirited catsos, that have their evasions at pleasure. | ||
Wily Beguiled 45: She must recount her many griefes [...] And so cunningly temporize with this cunning Catso. | ||
Scourge of Folly 86: To haue a wily ouer-wittie wife, Is (though a Catso) to be made a foole. | ||
Gloss. (1888) I 144: catso. A low-lived term of reproach, borrowed from the Italians by ignorant travellers, who probably knew not its real meaning. Used to signify a rogue, cheat, or base fellow. |
2. (also cadzo, carts, cartso, cartsue, catzo, cazzo) the penis.
Queen Anna’s New World of Words n.p.: Cazzipotente, mighty in a Cazzo. | ||
Court of King James 99: [He was not only] an excellent Musician [but] had a Catzo of an immense length and bignesse, with this, being his Tabor stick, his palme of his hand his Tabor, and his mouth his Pipe, he would so imitate a Tabor and Pipe, as if it had been so indeed: To this Musicke the ladies would dance ever after Supper; [...] and it was beleeved, that some of them danced after that Pipe without the Tabor. | ||
Gargantua and Pantagruel (1927) I Bk 1 152: Doth not he die like a good fellow that dies with a stiff catso? | (trans.)||
‘Haymarket Hectors’ in Poems on Affairs of State (1963) I 168: Consulting his cazzo, he found it expedient / To engender Don Johns on Nell the comedian. | ||
‘Ballad on Betty Felton’ in Court Satires of the Restoration (1976) 48: Quickly chastizes all pricks in rebellion, / And is able to break a whole catso battalion. | ||
‘On the Ladies of Honour’ Harleian Mss. 7319.427: Hermaphrodite Frenchvile with Louther her Friend With Cadzo & Dildo full often have Sin’d. | ||
Swell’s Night Guide 107/2: Ace of spades [...] see pego and cartsue. | ||
Sl. and Its Analogues. | ||
Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 57: Catze, m. The penis; ‘the catzo’. | ||
Homosexual Society Appendix 3 167: Cartso, penis. | ||
Queens’ Vernacular 49: the penis [...] cartso (Brit gay sl, fr It cazzo = penis). | ||
Maledicta VI:1+2 (Summer/Winter) 139: Parlyaree in homosexual use […] gives us [...] cartso = penis, from Italian cazzo. | ||
‘Polari’ on Equity Alliance 🌐 Carts: Cock and Balls. | ||
Fabulosa 290/1: cartes, cartzo genitals, especially penis. | ||
Man-Eating Typewriter 43: A grandiose multisexual throbbering cartso. |
3. in fig. use of sense 2, courage.
Swell’s Night Guide 60: So nanty widding about pluck and cartsue; the biggest dogs dosn’t awlus wag the longest tails, you know. |
In compounds
(UK Und.) the vagina.
Swell’s Night Guide 60: Why, send I may live, if she wouldn’t stall Billy in a corner of her cartsue case, like a monkey would a cherry. |