Talk:Turkey merchant
Latest comment: 1 year ago by Equinox in topic Possible missing obsolete slang
Possible missing obsolete slang[edit]
John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary (1873) mentions further senses, including a pun on turkey, the bird:
- Turkey merchants, dealers in plundered or contraband silk. Poulterers are sometimes termed TURKEY MERCHANTS in remembrance of Horne Tooke's answer to the boys at Eton, who wished in an aristocratic way to know what his father was: “A TURKEY MERCHANT,” replied Tooke—his father was a poulterer. Turkey merchant, also, was formerly slang for a driver of turkeys or geese to market.