[f. CHUCK v.2 + FARTHING.] A game of combined skill and chance in which coins were pitched at a mark, and then chucked or tossed at a hole by the player who came nearest the mark, and who won all that alighted in the hole. (In modern use probably often applied to pitch and toss, or the like.)
c. 1690. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, Chuck farthing, a Parish-Clerk (in the Satyr against Hypocrites) also a Play among Boies.
1712. Steele, Spect., No. 466, ¶ 3. I catched her once … at Chuck-Farthing among the Boys.
1712. Arbuthnot, John Bull (1755), 23. He lost his money at chuck-farthing, shuffle-cap, and all fours.
1771. Smollett, Humph. Cl., III. 11 Oct. He understands … games, from chess down to chuck-farthing.
1849. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, xxxvii. They presently fell to pitch and toss, chuck-farthing, [etc.].
b. Misapplied to the farthing chucked.
a. 1834. Lamb, Lett., iii. To Coleridge, 25. I cannot scatter friendship like chuck-farthings.
c. attrib. or as adj. Petty, of paltry value.
1748. Richardson, Clarissa (1811), IV. 340. At war about some pitiful chuck-farthing thing or other.
d. To play (at) chuck-farthing with: to throw away or risk heedlessly. (Cf. ‘to play ducks and drakes with.’)
1837. Syd. Smith, Let. Archd. Singleton, Wks. 1859, II. 278/1. Playing at chuck-farthing with human happiness.
1883. Pall Mall Gaz., 1 Nov., 4/1. Although Lord Randolph Churchill is a democratic Tory, he declines to ‘play chuck-farthing with the Constitution.’ Ibid. (1888), 18 Dec., 1/1. What are our Imperialist Ministers doing?… They are playing chuckfarthing with the Empire.
