subs. (cards’).—A cheating trick at cards; any particular card is cut by previously curving it by the pressure of the hand: Fr. pont sec. [The modus operandi of avoiding, or rather of neutralizing the cut—the very backbone of the card-sharper’s art—is somewhat difficult, and is generally performed by one of two methods, the BRIDGE and the ‘pass.’ In the former method the sharper, at the end of his shuffle—the cards being still held backs uppermost in the left hand—takes some twelve or fifteen of the underneath cards lengthwise between the thumb and first and second fingers of the right hand and throws them on the top of the pack, at the same time giving them a slight squeeze outwards which causes them to assume an imperceptible curve. When placed on the table to be cut, the pack will now, owing to this curve or ‘BRIDGE,’ present in the middle a very slight gap, almost invisible to the eye; and experience shows that the odds are twenty to one, that the adversary will cut exactly at that very spot, thus taking off the twelve or fifteen cards thrown on the top, and bringing the ‘readied’ portion of the pack back to its original position.]
1851. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, I. 266. I got my living by card-playing in the low lodging-houses … I worked the oracle; they were not up to me. I put the first and seconds on, and the BRIDGE too.
1859. LEVER, Davenport Dunn, I., 251. I’ve found out the way that Yankee fellows does the king. It’s not the common BRIDGE that everybody knows.
1866. YATES, Black Sheep, I., 70. The genius which had hitherto been confined to BRIDGING a pack of cards, or ‘securing’ a die, talking over a flat, or winning money of a greenhorn, was to have its vent in launching a great City Company.
Verb (old).—See quot.
1819. J. H. VAUX, A Vocabulary of the Flash Language. To BRIDGE a person, or to throw him over the bridge, is … to deceive him by betraying the confidence he has reposed in you.
TO THROW A PERSON OVER THE BRIDGE, verb. phr. (common).—To betray confidence.
A GOLD (or SILVER) BRIDGE, subs. phr. (colloquial).—An easy way of escape.
BESIDE THE BRIDGE, adv. phr. (colloquial).—Off the track; astray.
