castor, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

castor n.

also caster

[14C castor, a beaver. Such hats were made of beaver fur or, if as was increasingly the case, of rabbit, disguised to look as if they were beaver]

a hat; the suggestion, see cite 1826, is of inferior quality.

1653		Mercurius Democritus 28 Sept.-5 Oct. 596: A zealour Caster-maker, that makes Leather Beavers [etc.].
1683		Proc. Old Bailey 10 Oct. 1: Hugh Jones, Sidny Vandelo, Edward Williams, Charles Dod, and Charles Roberts, were tryed for robbing Richard Littleton of a Castor, and four Shillings in Money.
1691		N. Ward ‘The Poet’s Ramble after Riches’ in Writings (1704) 7: Then to look big I cock’d my Caster, / And bid the Hostler call his Master.
1709		N. Ward Compleat and Humorous Account of Remarkable Clubs (1756) 38: He cocks up his Castor one Evening, claps his Hand upon the Pummil of his Sword [...] and pays a Visit to the Club.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy IV 200: Instead of their Beavers and Castors so good, / In their picked Caps they are forc’d to the Wood.
1754		B. Martin Eng. Dict. (2nd edn).
1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn).
c.1800		‘Tom the Drover’ No. 30 Papers of Francis Place (1819) n.p.: She pads the hoof up and down, and with a beaver castor she goes, / With an India man about her squeeze.
1800		Sporting Mag. Apr. XVI 27/1: Lost my last new caster, cost twenty-five shillings.
1819		‘One of the Fancy’ Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress 12: Each threw up his castor, ’mid general huzzas.
1826		Pierce Egan’s Life in London 9 Apr. 502/2: [S[ome gentleman among the bystanders had [...] substituted a castor in a most lamentable state of dilapidation for his own magnificent brand new tile.
1828		F.F.Cooper Elbow-Shakers! I i: His tune whistling gaily, that made me dance light, / Give me Bill with his castor so lily white.
1830		Egan Finish to the Adventures of Tom and Jerry (1889) 309: I give and bequeath unto my friend, Jerry Hawthorn, Esq., my tile, my castor [...] otherwise my hat.
1835		N.Y. Transcript 4 Feb. 2/2: Walking up to the ropes, he threw his castor into the round-about.
1841		‘The Four & Ninepenny Hat’ Dublin Comic Songster 102: No matter man or master, / A guinea was the lowest charge / For a swellish-looking castor.
1842		Wkly Rake (NY) 3 Sept. n.p.: Sullivan [...] first entered the ring, and threw up his ‘castor’ .
1848		Sinks of London Laid Open 25: He occasionally favoured us with a few oblique and professional glances from beneath a white castor.
1851		G. Borrow Lavengro II 273: The coachman [...] dressed in a fashionably cut great coat, with a fashionable black castor on his head.
1857		Bell’s Life in Victoria (Melbourne) 25 July 3/1: [T]he ring was quickly pitched, and [...] Job Cobley shied his castor within the arena.
1858		O.W. Holmes Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 206: The last effort of decayed fortune is expended in smoothing its dilapidated castor. The hat is the ultimum morieus of ‘respectability’ .
1860		Bell’s Life in Sydney 7 Apr. 3/2: [He] concluded by bestowing fistic benediction upon the clerical ‘tile,’ which materially altered the shape of that canonical ‘castor’.
1862		‘Cheap John’ in Prince of Wales’ Own Song Book 50: A tile – a castor – a skull case – a nut-shell.
1873		J. O’Connor Wanderings of a Vagabond 267: This address received several interruptions during its delivery, several of the audience calling out, ‘Spin yer string short, Govey!’ ‘O gas!’ ‘Dry up and bust!’ ‘Shy yer castor and let’s drink,’ with many more elegant phrases in common use.
1889		Times-Democrat (New Orleans, LA) 9 July 3/6: Prize Ring Slang [...] ‘castor,’ a hat or cap (before entering the ring the fighter tosses in his cap, this is called ‘shying the castor’).
1889		Dead Bird (Sydney) 12 Oct. 7/4: Burns was the first to shy in his castor.
1891		F.W. Carew Autobiog. of a Gipsey 359: I’ll sky the castor.
1897		W.T. Goodge ‘Great Aus. Slanguage’ in Baker Aus. Lang. (1945) 117: And his clothes he calls his clobber / Or his togs, but what of that / When a castor or a kady / Is the name he gives his hat!
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 28 Dec. 8/3: With a hole knocked in your ‘caster,’ / And your clobber smeared with grime.
1905		Sporting Times 27 May 1/5: ‘Strike me heliotrope!’ cried the patron when he saw the castor.
1911		Truth (Brisbane) 22 Jan. 10/4: ‘Truth’ respectfully doffs its figurative ‘castor’ to these splendid women.
1914		Observer (Wellington) 21 Dec. 30/2: At the fence he shifts his castor, saying ‘S’truth!’.
1914		Dundee Courier 3 Mar. 8/1: The Hat in Slang [...] A by no means exhaustive list would include ‘tile,’ ‘golgotha,’ ‘canister,’ ‘castor,’ ‘chimney,’ ‘colleger,’ ‘cock and pinch,’ ‘cowshooters,’ ‘david,’ ‘digger’s delight,’ ‘fantail,’ ‘gomer,’ ‘goss,’ ‘moab,’ ‘molocher,’ ‘muffin,’ ‘mushroom,’ ‘pill biox,’ ‘stove pipe,’ ‘thatch,’ ‘truck,’ and ‘wee jee’.
1927		(con. 1835–40) P. Herring Bold Bendigo 22: Had I not been born into an estate [...] I might have shied my castor into the ring. The Duke gave a jaunty tilt to his badger-grey beaver.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1986		G.A. Wilkes Exploring Aus. Eng. 13: One enterprising convict, James Hardy Vaux, put together a vocabulary of the criminal slang of the colony – the ‘flash’ language – in 1812. His list includes [...] castor for hat, and awake with the explanation that ‘to be awake to any scheme, deception, or design, means, to see through or comprehend it’. As we would now say, ‘I am a wake-up to that’.

In phrases

demi-castor (n.) (also demy-castor)

‘an inferior quality of beaver’s fur, or a mixture of beaver’s and other fur’ (OED).

1640		J. Entick London II 175: Beaver hats, Demi-casters [M.] [F&H].
1764		(con. 1630s) A. Anderson Origin of Commerce in Nares I 234/2: The following proclamation [...] was published in the time of Charles I [...] ‘Nor shall any hats, calld demy-castors, be henceforth made to be sold here’.
1822		R. Nares Gloss. (1888) I 234: †demi-castor. A sort of hat.