subs. (old).—1. A cloak. [Cf., CASTOR, a hat; there seems to be no historical improbability for a similar derivation].
Another old cant term for a cloak was CALLE (q.v.), and the French have un bleu, whilst the Italian Fourbesque has toppo and manto, the latter probably meaning ‘a long black veil’; Calaõ. tralha. The Germania renders cloak by noche (literally ‘night,’ and signifying also in a canting sense ‘sadness’ and ‘sentence of death’); nube (literally a ‘cloud’); pelosa (specially applied to a cloak worn in the morning; literally ‘shaggy’ or ‘hairy’); bullosa or vellosa (a sailor’s cloak).
1567. HARMAN, A Caveat or Warening for Common Cursetors [E.E.T.S., 1869], p. 77. He walketh in softly a nights, when they be at their rest, and plucketh of as many garmentes as be ought worth that he may come by,… and maketh porte sale at some conuenient place of theirs, that some be soone ready in the morning, for want of their CASTERS and Togemans.
1610. ROWLANDS, Martin Mark-all, 37 [Hunterian Club’s Reprint, 1874]. CASTER: a Clocke.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v.
1811. GROSE and CLARKE, Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v.
2. (colloquial).—A cast-off or rejected person or thing. [From CAST, thrown, + ER.]
1859. J. LANG, Wanderings in India, p. 144. The horse which drew the buggy had been a CASTER; that is to say, a horse considered no longer fit for the cavalry or horse artillery, and sold by public auction, after being branded with the letter R (signifying rejected) on the near shoulder. [M.]
