adj. (common).—1. Artful; FLY (q.v.).
1712. Spectator, No. 314. If this gentleman be really no more than eighteen, I must do him the justice to say he is the most KNOWING infant I have yet met with.
1752. FIELDING, Amelia, Bk. x. v. ‘We have so much the advantage, that if the KNOWING ones were here, they would lay odds of our side.’
1819–24. BYRON, Don Juan, xi. 19.
| Who, on a lark, with black-eyed Sal (his blowing) | |
| So prime, so swell, so nutty, and so KNOWING? |
1821. D. HAGGART, Life, p. 11. Our first business of the day, was … not very unusual among KNOWING ones.
1821. W. T. MONCRIEFF, Tom and Jerry, p. 6. Flash, my young friend, or slang, as others call it, is a species of cant in which the KNOWING ones conceal their roguery from the flats.
1830. BULWER-LYTTON, Paul Clifford, p. 29 (ed. 1854). ‘Paul, my ben cull,’ said he with a KNOWING wink.
1834. W. H. AINSWORTH, Rookwood, bk. III. v. Until at last there was none so KNOWING.
1835. C. SELBY, Catching an Heiress, sc. 1. Ho, ho! he’s a KNOWING one.
1841. Punch, i. 29, 2. ‘Why is a cunning man like a man in debt?’—‘Because he’s a KNOWING one (an owing one).’
1843. DICKENS, A Christmas Carol. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the KNOWING ones call ‘nuts’ to Scrooge.
1845. The late fight between the Premier (Peel) and young Ben (D’Israeli), v. 9, p. 163. The KNOWING ones suspect that if he comes up to the scratch again—which is doubtful—he will come off second best.
1856. WHYTE-MELVILLE, Kate Coventry, xviii. There was a slight bustle among the KNOWING ones.
1863. C. READE, Hard Cash, i. 214. He had a very pleasant way of conveying appreciation of an officer’s zeal, by a KNOWING nod with a kindly smile on the heels of it.
1863. Frazer’s Magazine, Dec. ‘The English Spy.’ Much which is unfair in ordinary life is very clever and KNOWING on the race-course.
1883. Broadside Ballad, ‘Happy Thoughts,’ st. 4. My Uncle Dowle has lots of money; He’s a very KNOWING looking blade.
2. (common).—Stylish.
1811. AUSTEN, Sense and Sensibility, xix. Many young men, who had chambers in the Temple, made a very good appearance in the first circles, and drove about town in very KNOWING gigs.
1844. Puck, p. 14.
| With his weed in his cheek and his glass on his eye, | |
| His cut-away neat, and KNOWING tie, | |
| The milliner’s hearts he did trepan | |
| My spicy swell small-college man. |
1861. T. HUGHES, Tom Brown at Oxford, i. 5. Tom thought his cap a very KNOWING affair.
KNOWING BLOKE, subs. phr. (military).—A sponger on new recruits.
c. 1887. J. BRUNLEES PATTERSON, Life in the Ranks of the British Army, ch. xvii. Some of the ‘KNOWING BLOKES,’ prominent among whom will be the ‘grousers,’ will, in all probability, be … ‘chewing the rag, or fat.’
