windbill
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English[edit]
Noun[edit]
windbill (plural windbills)
- (finance, slang) A signed agreement to act as guarantor for another's debt.
- 1822, Sir Walter Scott, The Pirate:
- He would have got a bank-credit, manoeuvred with windbills, dashed out upon a large scale, and soon have seen his crop and stock sequestered by the Sheriff'; but in those days a man could not ruin himself so easily.
- 1854, Thomas Dick, LL.D., An Essay on the Sin and Evils of Covetousness:
- How frequently do we find persons establishing an extensive business on credit when they have no funds of their own; using windbills and sometimes forgeries; furnishing elegant houses with money which is not their own; living in luxury and splendour; dashing along in gigs and landaus; ...
- 1903, Norman Macpherson, Sir John Rankine, The Scots Revised Reports: Court of Session, Third Series, page 981:
- But then culpa tenet suos auctores, and that would bring the case to this question, had the master authority from the owner to grant this windbill of lading?