Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a heavy drinker; thus elbow-bending, drinking; see also bend one’s elbow under bend v.¹

1881		Trumble Sl. Dict. (1890) 13: Elbow crooker. A hard drinker.
1890		Music Hall & Theatre Rev. 24 May 5/1: Charlie Sheard, the Holborn elbow-lifter.
1906		Salt Lake Herald (UT) 30 Mar. 4/5: He has been crooking his elbow.
1907		Sun. Times (Perth) 3 Mar. 4/8: Blank’s wife had termined to leave him owing to his propensity for elbow-bending.
1930		Biz (Fairfield, NSW) 17 Jan. 3/4: The elbow-benders will lose one of their accomplished artists on Friday.
1936		Archie Seale Man About Harlem 18 Apr. [synd. col.] Many of the local armbendwers were out making merry.
1942		Davis & Wolsey Call House Madam 20: Like a hint to the elbow-benders.
c.1943		‘Bill O. Lading’ You Chirped a Chinful!! n.p.: Arm bender: One who drinks often.
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 139: The Times’ sports editor was an old elbow-bending partner of mine.
1945		R.L. Bellem ‘Coffin for a Coward’ in Hollywood Detective Dec. 🌐 it seemed screwy for him to come to a cafe like Plyman’s to do his elbow-bending.
1955		‘Ed Lacy’ Best that Ever Did It (1957) 143: Their roomers, who were just coming in from their Saturday night elbow-bending.
1958		McCulloch Woods Words 57: Elbow bender. A drinking man.
1989		J. Morton Lowspeak.
1991		C. Howell Book of Naughty Nomenclature 🌐 Booze Elbow-bender, Elbow-crooker.
1998		P. Doyle (con. late 1950s) Amaze Your Friends (2019) 60: Like elbow-bending at the Chamberlain Hotel.
2004		(con. 1960s-70s) T. Taylor Top Fellas 37/1: You could bend an elbow in any watering-hole you chose.
2005		K. Huff A Steady Rain act 1: The elbow-bender still lives in this one room chinch pad looking over an alley.
1974		‘P.B. Yuill’ Hazell Plays Solomon (1976) 20: These were just some of the careers I toyed with while my head was spinning and my elbow bending.

2. a drinking party.

1944

P. Kendall Dict. Service Sl. n.p.: arm bender . . . a drinking party.

(US) drinking.

1912

T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 35: Later on I hoist a few dark brews — elbow exercise.

see separate entry.

a fiddle-player.

1819		W. Scott Bride of Lammermoor XII 77: We’ll be screwing up our bit fiddles [...] among a’ the other elbo’-jiggers.
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) 320: While the elbow-scraper, grown groggy, / Tunes fiddle up, with senses foggy.

(US) a beggar, who lit. or fig. ‘nudges’ one for a handout.

1899

Coconino Sun (Flagstaff, AZ) 2 Sept. 9/1: Down with the ‘Elbow’ Man [...] The ‘elbow’ workers in Flagstaff are [...] so numerous that it is hardly possible to walk along the street without being importuned by the measly bums.

see elbow grease n.

(UK Und.) a violinist.

c.1850

Duncombe New and Improved Flash Dict.

1. a dice-player; thus elbow-shaking adj. [the action of shaking the dice cup].

1700		Farquhar Constant Couple Prologue: Your elbow-shaking fool, that lives by’s wits.
1725		New Canting Dict. n.p.: elbow-shaker as, He lives by shaking his Elbow; a Gamester or Sharper; one that lives only by Gaming.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Elbow shaker, a gamester, one who rattles Saint Hugh’s bones, i.e. the dice.
c.1790		‘Luke Caffrey’s Ghost’ Chap Book Songs 3: His face look’d for all the world like de rotten rump of a Thomas-street blue-arse, and his grinders rattled in his jaw-wags, like a pair of white-headed fortune-tellers in an elbow-shaker’s bone box.
1801		‘Modern Dict.’ in Sporting Mag. May XVIII 100/1: [as cit. 1785].
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1822		Life and Trial of James Mackcoull 15: He was not only reckoned an expert pickpocket, but a keen elbow-shaker.
1828		F.F. Cooper Elbow-Shakers! I i ii: Our luck may change! – there’s the respect / That give our Elbow Shaker so long a life.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.
c.1850		Duncombe New and Improved Flash Dict.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1894		G.A. Sala Things I Have Seen II 95: Many of the gambling-house proprietors had realised handsome fortunes [...] Fred Elbowshake cultivated a taste for the Old Masters.
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks 36/1: Elbow shaker, an expert dice or crap shooter.

2. by ext. of sense 1, an effete individual.

1834

‘Jack Downing’ Andrew Jackson 69: If you can’t drink what I give you, I’ll set you down as some elbow shaker; or aristocrat.

3. (US black) one who reminds others of a forgotten or overlooked fact or event by (fig.) digging them in the ribs.

1983

R. Klein Jailhouse Jargon and Street Sl. [unpub. ms.].

(US) a game whereby a man accosts an unknown woman and rubs his elbows against her breasts before running off – or getting hit or shouted at.

1974

(con. 1960s) R. Price Wanderers 89: He bumps into this fat lady and starts elbow-tittin’.

1. a brush-off, a rejection.

1982		Barr & York Sloane Ranger Hbk 158: elbow n. ‘She gave me the big E’. Used by young Sloanes to mean she told me to go away.
1999		Guardian Guide 5–12 June 87: Vicky [...] is once again given the big E.
2001		K. Waterhouse Soho 23: ‘Why do you say she gave you the Spanish fiddle?’ ‘Come again?’ ‘Spanish fiddle. El bow. That’s what your Cockneys call it. The Big E. The elbow.’.
2019		A. Parks February’s Son 243: ‘Heard this morning. Elaine gave you the big E’.

2. dismissal from a job.

1997		N. Barlay Curvy Lovebox 114: ’Spute with the chief. — And . . . — And nothin’. Big E.
2000		N. Barlay Crumple Zone 56: Maybe this time she’ll get the P, the B and the Big E.

to drink; thus elbow-crooking, drinking; thus note extrapolations in cits. 1875 and 1894.

1770		Gent.’s Mag. 559: Besides these modes of expressing drunkenness by what a man is, what he has, and what he has had, the following express it by what he does— [...] 77 Crooks his Elbow.
c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Crook .
1821		R. Waln Hermit in America on Visit to Phila. 2nd series 23: ‘I warrant the bang-ups have crooked their elbows’ quoth Tom.
1825		Jamieson Etym. Dict. Scot. Lang. (Supplement) I 271/2: To crook the elbow; as, She crooks her elbow, a phrase used of a woman who uses too much freedom with the bottle, q. bending her elbow in reaching the drink to her mouth .
1842		Spirit of the Times (Phila.) 14 Jan. n.p.: Hugh MacDonald and John Smith (not of Arkansas) were fined for elbow-crooking.
1861		N.E. Police Gaz. (Boston, MA) 12 Oct. 3/2: He was discharged for making too free with the ice water, or in other words, elevating his elbow too often.
1862		N.Y. Caucasian 15 Mar. n.p.: Democrats and Republicans [...] unitedly ‘crook the elbow’ in response to witty but never illnatured toasts.
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 593: Crook, to, viz., the elbow, is one of the many slang terms for drinking.
1875		Besant & Rice With Harp and Crown (1877) 200: A clever fellow [...] who might have done great things in literature but for his unfortunate crook of the elbow.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 4: ‘To crook one’s elbow,’ to drink.
1887		Great Falls Trib. (MT) 1 Jan. 2/1: The noble red man never crooks his elbow at the bar.
1894		G.F. Northall Folk-Phrases of Four Counties 14: He always had a crooked elbow [...] ‘Said of a man who has been a drunkard from his youth’.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 26: [C]rook one’s elbow, to drink.
1900		Burnley Gaz. 7 Mar. 4/5: Mrs Jolliboy: He tells me that he has learnt to crook his elbow, though I don’t know what that means exactly.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.].
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 27 Mar. 4/6: This particular doctor has had Government billets before in the never-never country and lost them through crooking his elbow too assiduously.
1908		‘O. Henry’ ‘The Clarion Call’ in Voice of the City (1915) 191: After a job I can crook elbows with my old friend Barney with a clear conscience.
1912		Sport (Adelaide) 7 Sept. 14/2: They Say [...] That Wanga. as usual, proved himself an athlete by continually raising his elbow.
1919		A. Baer Two & Three 30 Dec. [synd. col.] Once outside the three-mile zone they can bend the merry elbow [...] and shake up the brew.
1923		P. MacGill Moleskin Joe 55: Once I was able to [...] crook an elbow when them as didn’t take quarter’s much ale as me were flat in the sawdust.
1935		W. Coburn Law Rides the Range 173: Let’s [...] crook our elbows while exchanging choice bits of wit and wisdom.
1943		J.A.W. Bennett ‘English as it is Spoken in N.Z.’ in AS XVIII:2 Apr. 89: The century-old American phrase to crook the elbow (to have a drink) and its variant to bend the elbow have become naturalized on the other side of the Pacific.

a gesture used to emphasise the veracity of one’s statement.

c.1786

Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Crook your Elbow. To Crook ones Elbow & wish it may never come straight if the Fact then affirmed is not true, adds great Weight & Efficacy to an Oath, according to the Corinth of Bow Street & St Giles’s.

see eat one’s head under eat v.

(US) chaotic, unrestrained, harum-scarum.

2012

S. Blass Pirate for Life 112: The matchsticks [doubling as poker chips] went all over the floor, creating a mad scramble. It was elbows and assholes going down to pick up as many matchsticks as we could.

(US) to get angry.

1944

C. Himes ‘Let Me at the Enemy’ in Coll. Stories (1990) 42: We’ll all root, man [...] Don’t get on your elbows.

to be rejected, to be dismissed.

1974		P. de Feu Long-legged Women 169: He got the elbow from his teaching job because he led the students in a revolutionary attempt to remove some doors.
1996		J. Cameron It Was An Accident 6: Ain’t you working today you got the elbow?

to resist drinking alcohol.

1894

J. Astley Fifty Years (2nd edn) II 27: I [...] told him he would soon kill himself if he didn’t keep his elbow down.

see under power n.

on the scrounge.

1899		A. Binstead Gal’s Gossip 93: He has, to use his own words, ‘got a bookmaker on the bow’.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 104: NOD: ON THE CHEAP [...] Syns. on the bow-wow, on the never, on the jolly good fellow, on the bustle, on the free list.
1938		F.D. Sharpe Sharpe of the Flying Squad 329: bow (the) (pronounced ‘Bough’) : On the bow [...] ‘getting something for nothing,’ or securing entry to a place of amusement without payment (‘I got in on the bow’).
1977		D. Powis Signs of Crime 174: Bow, on the Variation of ‘on the elbow’ meaning scrounging.
1989		J. Morton Lowspeak 30: On the Bow [...] scrounging.

1. to play dice, to gamble; thus elbow-shaking n.

1623		Webster Devil’s Law-Case II i: Shaking your elbow at the Taule-boord.
1674		C. Cotton Compleat Gamester 1: Gaming is [...] a paralytical distemper which, seizing the arm the man cannot chuse but shake his elbow.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: He lives by shaking of the Elbow; a Gamester.
1704		S. Centlivre Gamester Act I: He is at shaking his Elbows over a Table [...] courting the Dice like a Mistress, and cursing them when he is disappointed.
1714		T. Lucas Lives of the Gamesters (1930) 231: Fellows who have other visible livelihood than that of shaking the elbow.
1725		New Canting Dict. n.p.: elbow-shaker as, He lives by shaking his Elbow; a Gamester or Sharper; one that lives only by Gaming.
1767		G. Colman Oxonian in Town Epilogue: Now hey for cards and dice! his elbows shake.
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn).
1801		Sporting Mag. Aug. XVIII 222/2: Let itch of gaming gowks entice, / To shake their elbows o’er the dice.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London I 289: ‘Mr. Mortimer and myself are going to take a review of the neighbourhood of St. James’s, probably to shake an elbow.’ ‘Excellent [...]. Though I am no means a friend to gaming.’.
1838		R.S. Surtees Jorrocks Jaunts (1874) 94: With the exception of a little ‘elbow shaking’ in the evening, there is [...] nothing else to do.
1846		New Swell’s Night Guide to the Bowers of Venus 15: Foreigners and gamblers, adventurers in play, perfectures in the elbow-shaking.
1850		Thackeray Pendennis II 222: It’s been doosedly dipped and cut into, sir, by the confounded extravygance of your master, with his helbow shakin’, and his bill discountin’.
1853		R.S. Surtees Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour 242: ‘Are they chaps with any “go” in them?—shake their elbows, or anything of that sort?’ asked Sponge, working away as if he had the dice-box in his hand.
1864		G.A. Sala Quite Alone I 40: ‘How he manages it,’ he continues, ‘I can’t imagine.’ [...] ‘Shakes his elbow,’ suggested purple-faced Captain Hanger.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1880		Henley & Stevenson Deacon Brodie I tab.I vii: smith: We thought [...] that maybe you’d like to exercise your helbow with our free and galliant horseman. [Ibid.] I tab.III iii: rivers: Well, Mr. Deakin, if you passatively will have me shake a Helbow- brodie: Where are the bones, Ainslie? [...] The old move, I presume? the double set of dice?
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 4: ‘To shake one’s elbow,’ to play with dice’.
1894		G.A. Sala Things I Have Seen I 202: A sporting baronet, who had suffered much from the infirmity of ‘shaking his elbow’ at Crockford’s.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. [as 1882].

2. to play cards.

1845		Bell’s Life in Sydney 25 Jan. 2/4: The ball was opened by shaking the elbow, whilst [...] the clashing of the cards, with their slang accompaniments, was anything but entertaining to the uninitiated.
1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn).
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1891		Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette 3 Apr. n.p.: Shaking his elbow at baccarat nearly every night [F&H].

(orig. US) consumed by, overwhelmed by.

1809		B.H. Malkin (trans.) Adventures of Gil Blas (1822) III 317: I lived some time with a walking dictionary at Salamanca; a fellow up to the elbows in quotation and commentary.
1885		Montagu ‘Memoir’ in Maginn Misc. I ix: They were at once ‘up to the elbows in friendship’.
1918		Alumni 149: He is up to his elbows in packing and assembling material for shipment to the states.
1926		Survey LV 118: In his private life he is up to his elbows in the social and economic experiments and problems of the Pacific Coast.
1944		Australian Parliamentary Debates CLIIVII 592: [He] is never satisfied unless he is up to his elbows in muck.
2009		Columbus (OH) Dispatch 🌐 [heading] Up to his elbows in emus.

(US) to drink (heavily).

1886

Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 13 Nov. 14/1: Two-thirds ol them will be dead broke long before the snow falls. Judging from the style In which they are now working their elnowa, .

(Irish) a general excl. of incredulity, dismissal.

2002

O’Byrne Files – Dublin Sl. Dict. 🌐 Me elbow!exclm. Expression of disbelief.

excl. of surprise or disbelief.

1908		Sporting Times 15 Feb. 2/5: Instructive, my elbow! ’Oo wants to be instructed?
1938		F. Anthony ‘Gus Tomlins’ in Me And Gus (1977) 167: ‘Pork sausages me elbow!’ yelled Gus.
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 74/2: my elbow! exclamation of surprise or disbelief.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].