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noun

Blackleg n.

A notorious gambler. (Colloq.)

A disease among calves and sheep, characterized by a settling of gelatinous matter in the legs, and sometimes in the neck. (Eng.)

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Etymology of 'Blackleg'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Blackleg" Quotes from Famous Books

... those which the young gentleman generally emitted respecting gentlemen whose backs were turned. He had known a little of Florac the year before at Baden: he had been mixed up with Kew in that confounded row in which Kew was hit; he was an adventurer, a pauper, a blackleg, a regular Greek; he had heard Florac was of old family, that was true; but what of that? He was only one of those d—— French counts; everybody was a count in France confound 'em! The claret was beastly—not fit for a gentleman to drink!—He swigged off a ...

— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... be a want of disposition, but rather a sufficient amount of sense, to make him a proficient in the business. He may be an ignorant dupe—a mere tool of the designing, the "cats paw" of some respectable blackleg, who thinks to cover his own crimes, by exciting public opinion against me, through an apparently respectable instrumentality. But I did not wish to bandy words with him, being impressed with the propriety of a resolution I made while a gambler, that it is ...

— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... into the argument. It's the old story. He objected to something I said as 'vague,' and I was ass enough to answer him. He is one of those people who is very strong on dogma, and treats his religion as if it were a sort of trades' union. He thinks I am a kind of blackleg, not true to my principles; or rather he thinks that I am not a Christian at all, and only call myself one for the sake of the associations. Of course he triumphs over me at every point. He is entrenched in what he calls a logical system, and he ...

— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... blackleg if once they were got into the union," persisted Nellie. "It's worth trying, to get a rise in wages and to stop fining and have shorter hours and ...

— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... Armigell Wade became a hawk, and at thirty years of age, having lost together with his estates all chance of winning the one woman who might have saved him—his cousin Ellinor—he became that most unhappy of all beings, a well-born blackleg. When he was told by thin-lipped, cool Colonel Wade that the rich shipbuilder, Sir Richard Devine, had proposed an alliance with fair-haired gentle Ellinor, he swore, with fierce knitting of his ...

— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

Words linked to "Blackleg" : do work, fink, worker, rat, strikebreaker