Strap

subs. (old).—1.  A barber. [Strap, a barber in SMOLLETT’S Roderick Random, 1748.]

  2.  (common).—Credit: orig. credit for drink. ON STRAP = ‘on TICK’ (q.v.); STRAPPED = penniless, bankrupt. See HARD-UP.

  1857.  National Intelligencer, Oct. Lowndes is STRAPPED; had to pay his wife’s cousin’s last quarter’s rent, which consumed what he had reserved for current expenses.

  1903.  BART KENNEDY, A Sailor Tramp, I. ix. ‘Say, … are you STRAPPED?’ ‘Oh … I’m not hard up. I’m all right.’ Ibid., II. i. Why didn’t you come to me when you were STRAPPED?

  Verb. (venery).—1.  ‘To lie with a woman’: see GREENS and RIDE (B. E. and GROSE).

  2.  (common).—To flog; to beat. Hence STRAPPING (or A DOSE OF STRAP-OIL or OIL OF STRAP’EM) = a thrashing; an April fool joke is to send a lad for ‘a penn’orth of STRAP OIL’: cf. STIRRUP-OIL.

  3.  (Scots’).—To hang.

  1824.  SCOTT, St. Ronan’s Well, xiv. It’s a crime baith by the law of God and man, and mony a pretty man has been STRAPPED for it.

  4.  (old).—To work (GROSE).

  See BLACKSTRAP.