vbl. sb. [f. CUP v. + -ING1.]
1. Surg. The operation of drawing blood by scarifying the skin and applying a ‘cup’ or cupping-glass the air in which is rarefied by heat or otherwise. (Also called distinctively wet cupping.) Dry cupping: the application of a cupping-glass without scarification, as a counter-irritant.
1519. Horman, Vulg., 40. Some do cures … with launsynge … boxynge, and cuppynge.
1732. Arbuthnot, Rules of Diet, 311. Of such sort is dry Cupping.
1886. H. Van Laun, Gil Blas, II. VII. xvi. 430. This … he attributed … to the cuppings which he had had the honour of applying.
2. The drinking of intoxicating liquor; a drinking-bout. arch. Cf. CUP sb. 10, v. 2.
c. 1625. [see CUP v. 2 b].
1649. Maid’s Petition, 3. To which stream of iniquity we may be a convenient stop, to dam up the[i]re overflowing cupping.
1868. Browning, Ring & Bk., IV. 293. No more wilfulness and waste, Cuppings, carousings.
3. The formation of a cup or concavity; a concavity thus formed.
4. attrib. and Comb., as (in sense 1) cupping-apparatus, -horn, -instrument, -vessel; CUPPING-GLASS; (in sense 2) † cupping-house, a drinking-house, tavern.
c. 1616. T. Adams, Wks. (1861), I. 277. A cupping-house, a vaulting-house, a gaming-house, share their means, lives, souls.
1858. O. W. Holmes, Aut. Breakf.-t., 79–80. They [the legs] are sucked up by two cupping vessels.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 659/1. Ancient cupping-horns, similar to those used through the East at the present time…. Cupping-instruments are described by Hippocrates.
