fogle
A pocket handkerchief.
Noun
- A pocket handkerchief.
- 1830, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford, 2009, Gutenberg eBook #7735, One, gentlemen, I myself expelled from our corps for ungentlemanlike practices; he picked pockets of fogles, (handkerchiefs)--it was a vulgar...
- […]and we've to pick up the stakes and cords at Uncle Ben's, to get the bird's-eye fogles in St. Martin's-lane,[…]. - 1853, Lord William Lennox, “Ernest Atherley, Or Scenes at Home and Abroad”, in The Sporting Review,...
- Doodles, therefore, wore a cut-away coat, a colored shirt with a fogle round his neck, old brown trousers that fitted very tightly round his legs, and was careful to take no gloves with him. - c. 1867, Anthony Trollope,...
Origin
Unclear. German Vogel (“bird”) has been suggested, the connection being bird's-eye, a fabric from which such handkerchiefs were made. Hotten (see References) suggests a connection with the Italian slang foglia (“pocket, purse”) or French argot fouille (“pocket”).