subs. (common).—1. A dining-table. Also MAHOGANY-TREE.
1840–1. DICKENS, Master Humphrey’s Clock. I had hoped to have seen you three gentlemen with your legs under the MAHOGANY in my humble parlor in the Marks.
1847. THACKERAY [in Punch, vol. XII, p. 13]. The MAHOGANY TREE [Title].
1847. THACKERAY, Vanity Fair, Vol. II. ch. vii. ‘I … can show a handsomer service of silver, and can lay a better dinner on my MAHOGANY, than ever they see on theirs.’
1855. STRANG, Glasgow and Its Clubs, 102. With his legs below the tavern MAHOGANY, etc.
1889. Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette, 18 Jan. The men who had so constantly had their legs under his MAHOGANY.
1892. W. E. HENLEY and R. L. STEVENSON, Deacon Brodie, Tableau III. Sc. I. p. 30. Why, man, if under heaven there were but one poor lock unpicked, and that the lock of one whose claret you ’ve drunk, and who has babbled of women across your own MAHOGANY—that lock, sir, were entirely sacred.
2. (nautical).—Salt beef; OLD HORSE (q.v.).
3. (common).—See quot.
1791. BOSWELL, Johnson (1835), viii. 53. Mr. Elliot mentioned a curious liquor peculiar to his country which the Cornish fishermen drink. They call it MAHOGANY; and it is made of two parts gin, and one part treacle, well beaten together.
1855. STRANG, Glasgow and Its Clubs, 102. With his legs below the tavern mahogany, and with his own tankard of MAHOGANY before him.
TO HAVE ONE’S FEET UNDER ANOTHER MAN’S MAHOGANY, verb. phr. (common).—To live on someone else.
TO AMPUTATE ONE’S MAHOGANY, verb. phr. (common).—To run away; to CUT ONE’S STICK (q.v.).
