Chapter Pig to Pigsney of P by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Pigskin (A). A gentleman's saddle, made of pigskin. “To throw a leg across a pigskin” is to mount a horse.

Pigtails (The). The Chinese; so called because the Tartar tonsure and braided queue are very general.

“We laid away telling one another of the pigtails till we both dropped off to sleep.”- Tales about the Chinese.

Pigeon (To). To cheat, to gull one of his money by almost self-evident hoaxes. Pigeons are very easily gulled, caught by snares, or scared by malkins. One easily gulled is called a pigeon. The French pigeon means a dupe.

“Je me deffieroy tantost que tu serois un de ceux qui ne se laissent si facilement pigeonner a telles gens - Les Dialogues de Jacques Tahureau, (1585).

   Flying the pigeons. Stealing coals from a cart or sack between the coal-dealer's yard and the house of the customer.
   Flying the blue pigeon. Stealing the lead from off the roofs of churches or buildings of any kind.
   To pigeon a person is to cheat him clandestinely. A gullible person is called a pigeon, and in the sporting world sharps and flats are called “rooks and pigeons.” The brigands of Spain used to be called palomos (pigeons); and in French argot a dupe is called pechon, or peschon de ruby; where pechon or peschon is the Italian piccione (a pigeon), and de ruby is a pun on dérobé, bamboozled.
   To pluck a pigeon. To cheat a gullible person of his money. To fleece a green-horn. (See Greenhorn.)

“ `Here comes a nice pigeon to pluck,' said one of the thieves.”- C. Reade.

Pigeon, Pigeons Pitt says in Mecca no one will kill the blue pigeons, because they are held sacred.
   The black pigeons of Dodona. Two black pigeons, we are told, took their flight from Thebes, in Egypt; one flew to Libya, and the other to Dodona, in Greece. On the spot where the former alighted, the temple of Jupiter Ammon was erected; in the place where the other settled, the oracle of Jupiter was established, and there the responses were made by the black pigeons that inhabited the surrounding groves. This fable is probably based on a pun upon the word peleiai, which usually means “old women,” but in the dialect of the Epirots signifies pigeons or doves.
   Mahomet's pigeon. (See Mahomet.)
   In Russia pigeons are not served for human food, because the Holy Ghost assumed the likeness of a dove at the baptism of Jesus; and part of the marriage service consists in letting loose two pigeons. (See The Sporting Magazine, January, 1825, p. 307.)
   Pigeon lays only two eggs. Hence the Queen says of Hamlet, after his fit he will be-

“As patient as the female dove
When that her golden couplets are disclosed [i.e. hatched].” Hamlet, v. 1.

   He who is sprinkled with pigeon's blood will never die a natural death. A sculptor carrying home a bust of Charles I. stopped to rest on the way; at the moment a pigeon overhead was struck by a hawk, and the blood of the bird fell on the neck of the bust. The sculptor thought it ominous, and after the king was beheaded the saying became current.
   Flocks of wild pigeons presage the pestilence, at least in Louisiana. Longfellow says they come with “naught in their craws but an acorn.” (Evangeline.)

Pigeon-English or Pigeon-talk. A corruption of business-talk. Thus: business, bidginess, bidgin, pidgin, pigeon. A mixture of English, Portuguese, and Chinese, used in business transactions in “The Flowery Empire.”

“The traders care nothing for the Chinese language, and are content to carry on their business transactions in a hideous jargon called “pigeon English.”- The Times.

Pigeon-hole (A). A small compartment for filing papers. In pigeon-lockers a small hole is left for the pigeons to walk in and out.

Pigeon-livered Timid, easily frightened, like a pigeon. The bile rules the temper, and the liver the bile.

Pigeon Pair A boy and girl, twins. It was once supposed that pigeons always sit on two eggs which produce a male and a female, and these twin birds live together in love the rest of their lives.

Pigg (See under the word Brewer .)