or poge, pogh, pogue, subs. (common).—1. A pocket; a bag; a sack; a pouch; a purse: generic: cf. PETER.—B. E. (c. 1696); MARTIN (1754); GROSE (1785); VAUX (1819). Also (corrupt) PALKE and PAKKE.
ENGLISH SYNONYMS.—Bounge; brigh; bung; busy-sack; carpet-swab; cly; cod; haddock; hoxter; kick; peter; pit; roger (also = portmanteau); roundabout; skin; sky (or skyrocket = rhyming); slash; suck.
FRENCH SYNONYMS.—Une baguenaude; une balade (ballade, or valade: avaler = to swallow); un bouchon; une felouse (felouze, filoche, fouille, or fouillouse); une fondrière; un four (or un four banal); une grande; un gueulard (or une gueularde); une louche; une morlingue; une parfonde (or profonde); une prophête; un porte-morningue (or porte-mornif).
ITALIAN SYNONYMS.—Fegatello; figadelto; foglia (= Fr. fouillouse: MICHEL); santa; scarsello (= Fr. escarcelle); scarpa; tuosa; zavatta (= Fr. savate).
1362. LANGLAND, Piers Plowman Creed [WRIGHT (1847), line 791].
| ‘Trewely, frere,’ quath I tho, | |
| ‘To tellen the the sothe, | |
| There is no peny in my PAKKE | |
| To payen for my mete.’ | |
| Ibid., Vision, l. 165. | |
| A POKE full of pardons. |
1383. CHAUCER, The Canterbury Tales [SKEAT, Works (1894)], ‘The Reeves Tale,’ l. 358.
| And in the floor, with nose and mouth to-broke, | |
| They walwe as doon two pigges in a POKE. |
14[?]. Douce MS., 52. When me profereth the pigge, opon the POGHE.
c. 1500. A Mery Jest how a Sergeaunt Wolde Lerne to be a Frere [HAZLITT, Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England, III. 128].
| They roule and romble, they turne and tumble, | |
| as pygges do in a POKE. |
d. 1529. SKELTON, The Bowge of Courte [DYCE, i. 48]. I have a stoppynge oyster in my POKE.
d. 1549. A. BORDE, A Mery Jest of the Mylner of Abyngton [HAZLITT, Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England, III. 106]. Me thinke our POKE is waxen light.
1600. SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It, ii. 7. And then he drew a dial from his POKE.
1662. FULLER, Worthies, 63. Some will have the English so called from wearing a pouch or POAKE (a bag to carry their baggage in) behind their backs.
1678. BUTLER, Hudibras, III. i. Had rifled all his POKES and fobs.
1868. Temple Bar, xxiv. 538. I prigged an old woman’s POKE on the fly.
1879. J. W. HORSLEY, ‘Autobiography of a Thief,’ in Macmillan’s Magazine, XL., 504. A POGE, with over five quid in it.
1883. Echo, 25 Jan., 2, 3. The POKE, which a pickpocket glories in having appropriated, is the Saxon bag or purse.
1888. Echo. 18 Dec. He heard a woman demanding money of the accused, who replied, “What have you done with the £2 I gave you out of the POGE?”
2. (thieves’).—Stolen property.
3. (colloquial).—A thrust or push; a dig with the fingers; ‘a blow with the fist’ (GROSE, 1785). As a verb. POKE has always been literary.
1849. BULWER-LYTTON, The Caxtons, xvii. 1. ‘But,’ concluded Uncle Jack, with a sly look, and giving me a POKE in the ribs.
4. (venery).—(1) An act of coition, and (2) a mistress: a GOOD (or BAD) POKE = an expert (or the reverse) at the game. Also as verb = to copulate: cf. PUSH and see GREENS and RIDE. Whence POKE- (or POKING-) HOLE = the female pudendum. See POKER.
1719. D’URFEY, Wit and Mirth; or Pills to Purge Melancholy, i. 204, ‘Mac Ballor.’ So I may no more POGUE the Hone of a Woman.
5. (colloquial).—A poke-bonnet.
1876. G. ELIOT, Daniel Deronda, xxiv. A grey frieze livery, and a straw POKE.
6. (American).—A dawdler; a LAZY-BONES (q.v.).
d. 1891. J. R. LOWELL, Fitz Adam’s Story. They ’re only worn by some old-fashioned POKES.
COLLOQUIALISMS are:—TO POKE ABOUT (or ONE’S NOSE INTO) = (1) to meddle, and (2) to busy oneself aimlessly or officiously; whence POKE-NOSE = a meddler, and as adj. = offensively intrusive; TO POKE FUN = to ridicule; TO POKE BOGEY = to humbug; TO BUY A PIG IN A POKE (see PIG); TO POKE FLY (tailors’) = to show how; TO POKE A SMIPE (old: cf. MEDICAL GREEK) = to smoke a pipe: see MARROW-SKYING; TO POKE BORAK (see BORAK).
1837. R. H. BARHAM, The Ingoldsby Legends (The ‘Monstre’ Balloon), I. 280. POKING YOUR FUN at us plain-dealing folks.
1838. J. C. NEAL, Charcoal Sketches, III. 124. Don’t you be POKING FUN at me now, Judge; this is too serious a matter.
1853. THACKERAY, Barry Lyndon, i. ‘What’s the Latin for gooseberry, Redmond?’ says she. She was always ‘POKING her FUN,’ as the Irish phrase it.
1857. C. KINGSLEY, Two Years Ago, i. POKING about where we had no business.
1862. New York Tribune, 7 June. The Senate refused to tax watches, plate, and dogs. The main reason for this refusal is the large expense of collecting, and the POKE-NOSE scrutiny involved in levying such taxes.
d. 1865. Life of Abraham Lincoln, 137 [DE VERE]. It was often said of Mr. Lincoln that he liked nothing so much as to POKE FUN at his advisers in the Cabinet, but those who could appreciate him knew very well, what a depth of wisdom and earnest will lay under the slight drapery of jest.
