[f. LITTLE a. + GO sb. Cf. GREAT-GO.]
1. A private and illegal lottery Now Hist.
See also quot. 1867; but no authority for the statement has been discovered.
[c. 1710[?]: cf. quot. 1867.]
1795. Sporting Mag., VI. 274. A private lottery, or little go, was drawing at a house in Islington.
1796. Colquhoun, Police Metropolis, 149. The Keepers of unlicensed Insurance Offices … have recently invented and set up private Lotteries, or Wheels, called by the nick-name of Little Go’s.
1798. Edgeworth, Pract. Educ. (1811), I. 315. Unlicensed lottery-wheels are called little-goes.
1802. Act 42 Geo. III., c. 119 § 1. All such Games or Lotteries, called Little Goes, shall … be deemed … common and publick Nuisances, and against Law.
1806. Ann. Reg., 388. An unlawful game of chance,… formerly known by the name of the Little Go, but now distinguished, to avoid the penalty, by the name of Ivory.
1830. Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), I. 195. It is a political little-go, in which everybody knows the concern to be ruinous in the main.
1867. C. Walford, Insur. Guide (ed. 2), 25. About this date [1710] … commenced a system of speculative assurances known as ‘the little goes.’ A number of persons combined, and each subscribed 5s. fortnightly, inclusive of policy stamps and entrance money, on condition of £200 being paid to his heirs and executors. In another of these schemes 5s. a quarter entitled the subscriber’s representatives to receive £120 on his demise.
1887. Proctor, Chance & Luck, 133. At illegal [lottery] offices, commonly known as ‘little goes,’ any sum, however small, could be risked.
2. Univ. colloq. The popular name (still current at Cambridge) for the first examination for the degree of B.A. (At Cambridge the official name is ‘The Previous Examination’; at Oxford ‘Responsions’ is the official name of the examination formerly known popularly as ‘Little-go,’ and now as ‘Smalls.’)
1820. Gentl. Mag., XC. I. 32. At present the Examination [at Oxford] is divided into a Little-go and a Great-go; colloquial appellations of the facetious great children sucking at the bosom of Alma Mater.
1824. Blackw. Mag., Oct., 461, note. The little-go is a new classical examination lately instituted at Cambridge.
1838. F. W. Robertson, Lett., 23 May (1882), I. 37. [dated ‘Brazenose, Oxford’], I have to take … my ‘little go’ this term.
1849. Thackeray, Pendennis, iii. He’s coaching me and some other men for the little go.
1860. M. Burrows, Pass & Class, i. (1866), 11. Responsions, commonly called ‘Little go’ or, still more familiarly, ‘Smalls.’
1876. Darwin, Life & Lett. (1887), I. 47. In my second year I had to work for a month or two to pass the Little Go, which I did easily.
attrib. 1882. L. Campbell, Life Clerk Maxwell, vi. 152. Some time before the little-go examination.
1889. Boy’s Own Paper, 3 Aug., 693/3. First came the three answers given to the ‘Little Go’ question.
