2. (stock exchange).—An applicant for shares in new issues, who has no intention of holding, but prefers to forfeit the deposit money if unable to sell at a premium on allotment. Hence (3) any irregular ‘outside’ dealer. Also as verb.
1848. C. KINGSLEY, Yeast, ii. If the Stock Exchange and railway STAGGING … are not The World, what is? Ibid., xii. The slipperiness, sir, of one STAGGING parson, has set rolling this very avalanche.
1871. G. D. ATKIN, House Scraps, 131.
| A STAG there was—as I’ve heard tell, | |
| Who in an attic us’d to dwell … | |
| And being blest, like many I know, | |
| With little Conscience, and less Rhino, | |
| Took to that frailest of all frail ways. |
4. (old).—A professional bailsman or alibi (BEE).
5. (common).—A shilling: see RHINO.
1887. W. E. HENLEY, Villon’s Straight Tip to all Cross Coves. You cannot bank a single STAG.
6. (provincial).—A romping girl.
7. (common).—A male. Whence STAG-DANCE = a man’s dance; a BULL-DANCE (q.v.): also STAG-PARTY; STAG-MONTH = the month of a woman’s lying-in; STAG-WIDOW = a man whose wife is in childbed.
1854. Baltimore Sun, 13 Nov. The prisoners in the jail at Lafayette, Indiana, have been provided with a violin; and, one of the number being a good player, they have frequent STAG-DANCES.
1856. LELAND, The Observations of Mace Sloper, Esq. in The Knickerbocker, xlvii. April, 407. I finally lose myself in a party of old bricks who, under pretence of ‘looking at the picture,’ are keeping up a small STAG-PARTY of their own at the end of the room.
1871. O. E. WOOD, The West Point Scrap Book. 50. After supper a universal ‘STAG-DANCE’ of not less than fifty couples came off. This is a peculiar kind of affair, in which the dancers arrange themselves in two long lines, facing each other, inside of a lane of candles, half buried in the ground, and above these, three muskets forming a tripod, and each bayonet having a candle spluttering on its point. Drums, fires, and violins formed the orchestra. The cadets started with a simultaneous bound, involving themselves inextricably, and at last became a mere competition who should work his legs and feet most excruciatingly.
Adj. (old).—See quot.
1602. DEKKER, Satiromastix [HAWKINS, The Origin of the English Drama, iii. 141]. Come, my little cub, do not scorn me because I go IN STAG, in buff.
Verb. (old).—1. To find, to watch closely, TO DOG (q.v.): e.g., TO STAG A THIEF = to look on and spoil his game; TO STAG THE PUSH = to watch the crowd; ‘Who’s that STAGGING?’ = ‘Who’s following?’ (GROSE, BEE). Also STAGGER = a spy.
1827. BULWER-LYTTON, Pelham, lxxxiii. Bess STAGS you, my cove! Bess STAGS you.
1828. BADCOCK (‘Jon Bee’), Living Picture of London. Lest the transaction may have been STAGGED by some impertinent bystander or a trap, he mounts his box and drives away.
1859. H. KINGSLEY, Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn, v. So you ’ve been STAGGING this gentleman and me, and listening, have you?
2. (common).—To dun; to beg.
