Cabbage

subs. (old).—1.  Generally applied to pieces purloined by tailors; attributively to any small profits in the shape of material. Quoted by Johnson as ‘a canting term,’ but now recognised. There is little chance of CABBAGE nowadays, save amongst those who ‘make up gentlemen’s own material’; but the expression is well understood by low-class dressmakers. In America a corresponding term is ‘COLDSLAW (q.v.) which consists of finely-cut cabbage, and represents the small remnants known in other quarters as ‘carpet-rags’ or CABBAGE. Cf., PIGEON SKEWINGS. [The derivation is obscure. Murray traces it back to 1663 (Hudibras [spurious]), but points out that Herrick [1648] apparently uses garbage and carbage for ‘shreds and patches used as padding.’ He then goes on to say that ‘if this was a genuine use at the time, carbage may easily have been corrupted to CABBAGE.’ This difficulty can, I think, be removed. In the seventeenth century, a style of feminine head-dress, then in vogue, very similar to the modern chignon, was called a CABBAGE. Thus in Mundus Muliebris [1690]:

  Now, if this usage (omitted from the N.E.D.) be compared with the three quotations first following, it would appear (1) that the word CABBAGE was in use prior to carbage or garbage for ‘shreds and patches’; (2) that carbage and garbage contain a sarcastic reference to the materials with which a woman’s CABBAGE, or chignon, was stuffed; and (3) that in every quotation the play upon words appears to confirm these contentions. Hence, if CABBAGE as a mode of dressing the hair was current during the seventeenth century (I have come across no earlier instance), it is possible that the stages of transition were as follows:—

  1.  CABBAGE = a well-known vegetable.

  2.  = A mode of dressing the hair, in such a form as to resemble a cabbage.

  3.  = The materials with which such a tire was stuffed.

  4.  = The shreds and pieces appropriated by tailors and others as perquisites.

  There is no evidence in support of such guesses as those in, for example, the quotations dated 1853 and 1886.

  1638.  RANDOLPH, Hey for Honestey (Old Play). Tailor. Nay, he has made me sharper than my needle; makes me eat my own CABBAGE.

  1648.  HERRICK, Hesperides (HAZLITT), I., 79. Upon some Women.

  1648.  HERRICK, Hesperides (HAZLITT), II., 325. Upon Lupes.

  1663.  BUTLER, Hudibras, II., 56.

  1742.  CHARLES JOHNSON, Highwaymen and Pyrates, p. 343. She takes him into Pissing-Alley, in Hollywell-Street, otherwise called the backside of St. Clements in the Strand, so eminently noted for Taylors selling there their CABBAGE.

  1748.  T. DYCHE, A New General English Dictionary (5 ed.). CABBAGE (s.) … also a cant word to express anything that is pilfered privately, as pieces of cloth or silk retained by taylors, mantua-makers, or others.

  1821.  COBBETT, Weekly Register, 28 April, col. 219. Taylor, of Charing Cross, will allow of no thumb-piece and of no CABBAGE.

  1853.  Notes and Queries, 1 S., viii., 315, col. 2. The term CABBAGE, by which tailors designate the cribbed pieces of cloth, is said to be derived from an old word ‘cablesh,’ i.e., wind-fallen wood. And their ‘hell’ where they store the CABBAGE, from helan, to hide.

  1886.  G. A. SALA, in Illustrated London News, 16 Oct., 394, 1. My correspondent’s derivation of CABBAGE from caboged [caboged = ‘cabossed’ or ‘caboched’ in heraldry, in Fr. cabochée. See Littré] is good; but there is another one, namely, cabas, a basket in which the pickings and stealings of cloth might be hoarded.

  The place where CABBAGE is stored is termed HELL (q.v.) or ONE’S EYE (q.v.); these terms, as also GOOSE (q.v.), a smoothing iron, are responsible for much cheap wit. Cf., MAKINGS and PICKINGS. The Spanish has sisa = ‘a petty theft.’

  2.  (old).—A tailor; sometimes CABBAGER, and formerly CABBAGE-CONTRACTOR (q.v.). For synonyms, see BUTTON-CATCHER and SNIP.

  c. 1696.  B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew. CABBAGE: a Taylor, and what they pinch from the Cloaths they make up.

  1725.  A New Canting Dictionary CABBAGE: Taylors are so called, because of their … Love of that Vegetable. The cloth they steal and purloin … is also called CABBAGE.

  3.  (old).—A style of dressing the hair similar to the modern chignon. [For suggested derivation, see sense 1.] Fr. un kilo.

  1690.  Mundus Muliebris.

  4.  (schoolboys’).—A translation or ‘crib’; sometimes shortened to CAB (q.v., sense 2).

  1868.  BREWER, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, p. 129. CABBAGE is also a common schoolboy term for a literary crib, or other petty theft.

  5.  (common).—A cigar. The French have une feuille de platane = a plane-tree leaf; also un crapulos or crapulados, a Hispanization of crapule = filth. For synonyms, see WEED.

  1843.  Punch’s Almanack, August 17. The cigar dealers, objecting to their lands being cribbed, have made us pay for the CABBAGE ever since.

  1848.  Punch, vol. XIV., p. 298. Q. Are cigars an English invention? A. No! the cigar is a Spanish article, that has been merely CABBAGED by the British manufacturer.

  1853.  C. S. CALVERLEY, Verses and Translations, p. 141 [ed. 1881], Carmen Sæculare.

  1889.  Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday, July 6.

  6.  (venery).—The female pudendum. Cf., GREENS. For synonyms, see MONOSYLLABLE.

  Verb (old).—1.  To purloin or pilfer pieces.

  1712.  ARBUTHNOT, The History of John Bull, pt. I., ch. x. Your tailor, instead of shreds, CABBAGES whole yards of cloth.

  1870.  New York Evening Sun, May 24. Report of Speech of Mr Chandler. Let us knock the British crown to flinders; let us arrange for some one or two hundred thousand British graves forthwith, and CABBAGE the whole boundless continent without any further procrastination.

  1882.  Notes and Queries, 6 S., vi., 210. But he said, If I CABBAGE that ring to-night, I shall be all the richer to-morrow.

  2.  (schoolboys’).—To use a translation or other adventitious aid in preparing exercises; to ‘crib.’

  1837.  T. P. THOMPSON, Exercises, Political and Others (1842), IV., 234, A speech, which … had been what schoolboys call CABBAGED, from some of the forms of oration … published by way of caricature.  [M.]

  1862.  H. MARRYAT, One Year in Sweden, II., 387. Steelyard—one of those sent by Gustaf Wasa as checks upon country dealers, who CABBAGED, giving short weight.  [M.]

  So also CABBAGED, ppl. adj., pilfered, or stolen; and CABBAGING, verbal subs., pilfering, purloining.