Cant. Also 9 coal. [Generally thought to be an old slang use of cole = COAL.] Money. To post the cole: to pay down the money.
1673. R. Head, Canting Acad., 13. Cole, Money of any sort.
1676. Warning for Housekprs., 6. We bite the Culley of his Cole.
c. 1684. Roxb. Ballads, VII. 19. My pocket with Cole to encrease.
1771–2. Batchelor (1773), II. 24. Cole is a cant word among my news-boys and other black-guards, for cash, pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings…. His uncle cannot slack his jokes, But always pays the Cole.
1781. Burgoyne, Lord of Manor, III. 45 (D.). Come, my soul, Post the cole, I must beg or borrow.
1832. Hood, in Athenæum, 7 July, 444/2. It would not suit me to write for them, even if they offered … to post the cole.
1870. Punch, LVIII. 12 Feb., 61/1. The Royal Academy still owes a heavy debt to landscape-painting, but we are glad it has ‘posted the coal’ in payment of a first instalment.
