leg-bail
Used in the jocular phrase to give (Sc. take) leg-bail, to run away, decamp: see bail n.1 5 c. Hence sometimes used (in allusion to this phrase) = unauthorized absence or departure, ‘French leave’, etc.
| 1774 Fergusson Poems (1807) 234 They took leg-bail and ran awa Wi' pith and speed. 1785 Grose Dict. Vulg. Tongue s.v. Leg, To give leg bail and land security, to run away. 1808 Sporting Mag. XXXII. 122 We have more occasion..for leg-bail than they have. 1861 Hughes Tom Brown at Oxf. xi. (1889) 107 [He] was giving them leg-bail as hard as he could foot it. 1889 Century Mag. Feb. 632/1 Judgment was enforced by the scalping-knife, with leg-bail or a tribal warfare as a court of last resort. |