ˈchuck-ˌfarthing
[f. chuck v.2 + farthing.]
A game of combined skill and chance in which coins were pitched at a mark, and then chucked or tossed at a hole by the player who came nearest the mark, and who won all that alighted in the hole. (In modern use probably often applied to pitch and toss, or the like.)
| c 1690 B. E. Dict. Cant. Crew, Chuck farthing, a Parish-Clerk (in the Satyr against Hypocrites) also a Play among Boies. 1712 Steele Spect. No. 466 ¶3, I catched her once..at Chuck-Farthing among the Boys. 1712 Arbuthnot John Bull (1755) 23 He lost his money at chuck-farthing, shuffle-cap, and all-fours. 1771 Smollett Humph. Cl. III. 11 Oct., He understands..games, from chess down to chuck-farthing. 1840 Dickens Barn. Rudge xxxvii, They presently fell to pitch and toss, chuck-farthing, etc. |
b. Misapplied to the farthing chucked.
| a 1834 Lamb Lett. iii. To Coleridge 25, I cannot scatter friendship like chuck-farthings. |
c. attrib. or as adj. Petty, of paltry value.
| 1748 Richardson Clarissa (1811) IV. 340 At war about some pitiful chuck-farthing thing or other. |
d. to play (at) chuck-farthing with: to throw away or risk heedlessly. (Cf. ‘to play ducks and drakes with’.)
| 1837 Syd. Smith Let. Archd. Singleton Wks. 1859 II. 278/1 Playing at chuck-farthing with human happiness. 1883 Pall Mall G. 1 Nov., Lord Randolph..declines to ‘play chuck-farthing with the Constitution’. 1888 Ibid. 18 Dec. 1/1 What are our Imperialist Ministers doing?..they are playing chuckfarthing with the Empire. |