Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) Melbourne, Victoria.

1889

Dead Bird (Sydney) 12 Oct. 1/1: That Round Hill mining boom in Cabbageopolis was not a square affair apparently.

1. (US, also cabbage-roll) a poor-quality cigar; thus the joc. query Who’s smoking cabbage leaves?

1854		‘Cuthbert Bede’ Adventures of Mr Verdant Green (1982) II 231: Poor Footelights, who’d think as much of cabbage-leaves as he would of real Havannahs.
1855		Bell’s Life in Sydney 22 Sept. 3/3: And stretching across the counter, assisted himself to a jar containing a few bundles of the primest ‘cabbage leaf’.
1866		Night Side of N.Y. 18: The cigarette of the youth, the black cabbage-roll of the rough and the light Havana of the bank clerk.
1867		G.W. Harris Sut Lovingood’s Yarns 258: A winkin prudins’ an’ silence at me frum onder the aidge ove a cabbige leaf monsus strong.
1912		M. Nicholson A Hoosier Chronicle 62: Try one of those cigars [...] If they’re cabbage leaf it isn’t my fault [DA].

2. (US) money, banknotes; usu. in pl.

1939		T.J. Farr ‘The Language of the Tennessee Mountain Regions’ in AS XIV:2 90: cabbage leaves. Paper money.
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.

1. a German.

1856		Falkirk Herald 25 Sept. 4/5: The German reporters [...] says the correspondent of the Times, write in eloquent blanks. ‘My pen,’ writes one bedazzled cabbage-eater, ‘comes to a stand-still involuntarily as the scene passes’.
1944		(con. 1919) D. Wecter When Johnny Comes Marching Home 283: Cold contempt for Heinies, the cabbage-eaters, the squareheads, was agreed to be the best behavior.

2. a Russian.

1899		Record-Union (Sacramento, CA) 12 Nov. 8/3: Cabbage eater, Kapustalk, a Russian .
1983		Maledicta VII 25: Russians were named cabbage eater.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 228: Cabbage eater, a Russian.

1. (Aus.) Victoria; thus cabbage gardener, cabbagelander, cabbage patcher, a native of Victoria.

1856		Bell’s Life in Sydney 4 Oct. 3/1: A hungry looking individual, of the ‘loafer’ class, and rejoicing in the same patronymic as the Irish patriot, of Cabbage garden notoriety.
1872		S. Aus. Advertiser (Adelaide) 30 Nov. 2/5: Mr Macleay [...] called the Attorney General a cabbage gardener and a fenian.
1882		Argus (Melbourne) 24 Jan. 6/3: Mr Bent [...] referred to the recent allusion to Victoria [...] in which the colony was termed ‘a cabbage garden’, and that he, Mr Bent, had been called by some people ‘the cabbage gardener’.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Jan. 6/4: We did have some thoughts of wedding a ‘Cabbage Garden’ girl, but have since concluded to wait. It may be stated that the Jane above mentioned resides in Collingwood (Vic.).
1894		Truth (Sydney) 15 Apr. 1/1: The wholesale reduction in prize money for the Melourne Cup (Victoria’s world-wide advertisement) is a fair indication of the depression existing in the decaying ‘Cabbage Garden’.
[1900		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 7 Nov. 1/1: The big Carnival of racing commenced by the V.A.T.C. last month [...] A Cup carnival in the cabbage cultivating country can cripple the racing].
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 36: CABBAGE GARDEN: a New South Wales nickname for Victoria. [...] At the time a large trade was carried on in the export of cabbages and cauliflowers from Melbourne to Sydney, in fact the Sydney market was almost wholly supplied with these vegetables from Victoria. [Ibid.] 49: Cabbage-gardener [...] Victorians.
1903		J. Furphy Such is Life 35: Victoria, I know, is called the Cabbage Garden.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 31 Jan. 4/6: Both these erudite prelates are agreed that what one calls a ‘scourge’ [...] came upon the land of the cabbage gardeners .
1908		H. Lawson ‘The Blanky Papers’ in Roderick (1972) 786: You can blanky well secesh and go in with the blanky Cabbage-gardeners. We won’t blanky well miss you.
1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 12 June 2nd sect. 12/5: It’s all very well to denounce land monopoly in the Cabbage Garden and the Fly-speck, but why [...] run a ring-fence around the Commonwealth.
1910		Bulletin (Sydney) 22 Sept. 36/2: When Jumbuck and Horny whisper to him that this meddlesome cabbage-gardener is talking through his neck, he will consider that J. and H. know more about the matter than does.
1949		Sun. Herald (Sydney) 30 Jan. 65/2: There is an Australian who comes from the city, and an Australian who comes from the bush but there is not [...] a recognisable Bananalander or Crow-eater, a Cabbage-gardener or Ma-stater.
1949		Chron. (Adelaide) 24 Mar. 43/3: Queenslanders, Bananalanders, banana men and sugarlanders: Victorians, Yarrasiders, cabbage gardeners, cabbagelanders.
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 231/2: Cabbage Patch – Victoria. Cabbage Patcher – a person from Victoria. The terms are said to have originated in Sydney.
1972		A. Chipper Aussie Swearers Guide 64: Cabbage-Laner. Resident of Victoria.
1978		T. Davies More Aus. Nicknames 2: Cabbage Patchers hail from Victoria.
2022		D. Andrew Aussie Sl. 10: Cabbage Patchers Residents of Victoria.

2. pertaining to Ireland.

(mid-late 19C) a coward.

1858		Sligo Jrnl 31 Dec. 2/: The wild anticipations of excited cabbage-garden patriots, however, subsided with the deeneee famine fever.
1859		Stonehaven Jrnl 29 Dec. 2/2: John Mitchell—the cabbage garden patriot, and now an American slaveholder—writes to say that he has abjured his allegiance to all kings and queens.
1865		Dublin Eve. Mail 21 Sept. 3/4: After the ‘insurrection’ of 1848, a number of disaffected individuals left the country, and went to America, in the belief that they were there safe from capture. These were mainly the ‘Cabbage Garden’ patriots.
1869		Sportsman (London) 2/1: Notes on News [...] You most neither take the trousers from Fenian nor the ‘O’ from his patronymic [...] the sad fate of the sedition-monger O’Sullivan —who was cruelly forced to sleep without his trousers —should a salutary warning to cabbagegarden patriots.
1878		S. Wales Dly News 16 Jan. 2/6: [T]he cabbage-garden patriots, who shout so fiercely, but who succumb so easily to the hated Saxon.
1881		Boston Guardian 25 June 3/2: [T]hese ‘frothy orators and cabbage garden patriots’ must be in the pay of Ireland's enemies.

1. (US) a Dutch or German person.

1983		Maledicta VII 25: Cabbage head after 1854 was applied to both the Dutch and Germans in America.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 13: The French have long been reviled as frogs, the Germans as the Boche (cabbageheads) and as krauts (from sauerkraut).

2. see also separate entry.

1. the German immigrant section of a town.

1967–9

in DARE.

2. the poor area of a town.

1994		Bouthillette ‘Gentrification by Gay Male Communities’ in Whittle Margins of the City 70: Cabbagetown is a rather large inner city neighbourhood east of downtown Toronto.
2002		M. Guthro at Bodies ’n’ Motion 🌐 For me the 52-year journey from the poverty stricken backstreets of the Cabbage Town section of Toronto to the serenity of White Rock has been a wild journey.
2007		N. McCall Them (2008) 12: The poor white trash in Cabbagetown despised chi-chi yuppies a tad less than they hated niggers.

a gardener, a greengrocer.

1866		in A.B.C. of a New Dict. of Flash, Cant and Sl.
1937–84		Partridge DSUE (1984) 171/1: late C.19–early 20.

see separate entry.

(Aus.) a Chinese vegetable seller.

1901

Bulletin (Sydney) 26 Jan. 15/1: Recently my cabbage-John has had a weird and wandering eye.

see separate entries.

an umbrella.

1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1824		Pierce Egan’s Life in London 26 Sept. 4/3: [T]the rain, a little troublesome to coves who had not provided themselves with cabbage plants.

the legs.

1890–1904

Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

(US) to repeat oneself.

1870		Overland Monthly (CA) Apr. 317/2: ‘It’s no use to sell your cabbages twice,’ says I, and I never repeats.
1888		Amer. N&Q 1 6/2: ‘I Don’t Boil my Cabbage Twice.’ In the country, especially in the country towns of Pennsylvania, tis is a very common expression [...] It signifies that the person uttering it does not intend to repeat an observation.
1903		S. Clapin New Dict. Americanisms.
1938		C. Odets Rocket to the Moon Act I: I don’t chew my cabbage twice, Miss Cleo.
1953		S. Bellow Augie March (1996) 508: Now [...] listen attentively. I don’t like to chew my cabbage twice.
1962		T. Berger Reinhart in Love (1963) 23: ‘What’s that?’ ‘I never chew my cabbage twice.’.
1978		(con. 1915) in DARE 1 609/1: ‘I don’t chew my cabbage twice’ means ‘I am not going to repeat myself.’.
1980		Northern Virginia Folklore Archive n.p.: Proverb: ‘I Never Chew My Cabbage Twice.’.
1984		Paris News (TX) 30 May 6/2: When it came to expressing his sentiments about the British, Jackson ‘nmver had to boil his cabbage twice,’ as the old Irish saying goes.
1998		Mike’s World 99 🌐 Look. buddy! Don’t boil my cabbage twice.
2000		Curtain Up mag. 22 June 🌐 According to Coward’s friend and biographer Graham Payn, unless finances so dictated, Coward studiously avoided revivals on the theory of ‘never boil your cabbage twice.’.
2000		‘Ask Emerson’ Oregon Outdoor Recreation Guide 🌐 I hate to chew my cabbage twice, so check out the link below. It’s my answer to a similar question about bass fishing in the Portland area.
2006		News Star (Monroe, LA) 14 Sept. 21/5: He sounded like my uncle Dick. And he didn’t chew his cabbage twice.

an umbrella.

1830

Egan Finish to the Adventures of Tom and Jerry (1889) 309: To my out and-out friend and companion, Corinthian Tom, I give my spread, my summer-cabbage, my water-plant, but more generally understood as my umbrella.