Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a halfpenny; thus in US a cent.

1725		Swift ‘Wood, an Insect’ in Miscellanies V (1736) 75: Unless, like the Dutch, you would rather boil This Coiner of *Raps in a Cauldron of Oil. (*A cant Word in Ireland for a Counterfeit Half-penny).
1762		Foote Orators in Works (1799) I 217: I’ll wager you three thirteens to a rap.
1795		J. O’Keeffe Life’s Vagaries 24: He didn’t give me a Manx rap half-penny.
1800		Sporting Mag. May XVI 99/2: Zounds! a million to a rap.
1827		W.T. Moncrieff Bashful Man II iv: Haven’t a rap left of the last 500 dad sent.
1832		S. Warren Diary of a Late Physician in Works (1854) III 119: ‘What! Is it all spent, George?’ [...] ‘Every rap.’.
1838		‘The Devil’ in Bentley’s Misc. Mar. 304: He then drew a purse from his poke, And showed them there was not a rap in it.
1845		J. Lindridge Sixteen-String Jack 327: ‘If we are to do business, what is your price!’ ‘Two hundred, not a rap more.’.
1851		R.S. Surtees Young Tom Hall (1926) 201: I don’t believe he has anything [...] — a reg’lar take-in — hasn’t a rap, I dare say.
1852		G.C. Mundy Our Antipodes III 87: ‘Sorrow a rap’ had he got of all his savings.
1855		Delhi Sketch Bk 1 Feb. 22/1: I’ve squandered in drams every rap of my tin.
1861		Hills & Plains I 111: ‘How the deuce is it that girls in India never have a rap?’.
1869		Sportsman (London) 4 Feb. 2/2: Notes on News [...] [W]e mention this fact much upon the principle of those traders who nail ‘raps’ to their counters.
1867		Living Age (NY) 22 June 782/1: She hadn’t a rap you know; and knew how to spend money as well as any girl in London.
1874		J. Greenwood Wilds of London (1881) 3: They’ve choused the flats of every rap they’ve got about ’em.
1884		Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday 14 June 54/2: There were [...] twenty mobs (pickpockets) who never got a rap.
1883		‘Mark Twain’ Life on the Mississippi (1914) 391: Pat shall go to heaven in the twin to it, if it takes the last rap the O’Flaherties can raise; [...] stick on some extras, too, and I’ll give ye another dollar.
1881		Morn. Bulletin (Rockhampton, Qld) 18 July 2/6: A half-penny [...] may find the following; ‘bawbees,’ ‘browns,’ ‘camden town,’ ‘coppers,’ ‘ flatch,’ ‘gray,’ ‘madge.’ ‘make,’ ‘mag or maga,’ ‘posh,’ and ‘rap’.
1892		H. Nisbet Bushranger’s Sweetheart 134: ‘Got any tin?’ ‘Not a rap.’.
1894		Mirror of Life 15 Dec. 3/3: [O]ff ran Josh, resolving not to share a rap.
1900		Sporting Times 24 Feb. 1/3: ‘They got nothing,’ he chuckled, ‘not a solitary rap, for fortunately—I repeat, fortunately—I had lost every mag I had on the last race’.
1905		‘The Stringybark Cockatoo’ in ‘Banjo’ Paterson Old Bush Songs 45: He drove me off without a rap – the stringybark cockatoo.
1922		Dundee Eve. Teleg. 19 July 2/4: [A] halfpenny is a ‘brown’ or a ‘madzer (pronounced ‘medzer’), ‘saltee’ [...] ‘mag,’ ‘posh,’ ‘bawbee,’ or ‘rap’.

2. (orig. Irish) a counterfeit halfpenny, circulated 1700–50.

1724		Swift Drapier’s Letters in Works (1755) V II. 14: Copper halfpence or farthings [...] have been for some time very scarce, and many counterfeits passed about under the name of raps.
1725		Swift ‘Wood An Insect’ in Chalmers Eng. Poets XI (1810) 445/2: Unless, like the Dutch, you would rather boil This coiner of raps in a cauldron of oil.
1793		S. Thomson ‘The Country Dance’ in A. Carpenter Verse in Eng. in 18C Ireland (1998) 489: The Cappers up he clinks! / The haf’ o’t’s raps — he gies a curse.
1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn) n.p.: A rap is likewise an Irish halfpenny.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1796].
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1910		P.W. Joyce Eng. As We Speak It In Ireland (1979) 310: Rap; a bad halfpenny.

3. money in general.

1898

Binstead & Wells Pink ’Un and Pelican 278: Fleet Street can possibly ‘give a bit of weight’ to most places as a ‘run for the utterly magless, rapless and pebble-beached’.