Abram cove

• Abraham-cove, Abraham cove

Abram cove (plural Abram coves)

1. (obsolete, Britain, thieves' cant) Synonym of Abraham man

• 1608, Dekker, Thomas, English Villanies:

  An Abram cove […]

• 1827, Smith, Horace, Reuben Apsley, page 121:

  "Curse him, Squire," croaked Chinnery, "don't suffer such an Abram cove to play the counterfeit crank. If he were to refuse to booze it at the George in White Friars, the Bear and Harrow in Chancery Lane, the Setting Dog and Partridge in Jackanapes Alley, or any of the loyal houses in London, they would mill him with a filch, or give him a worse Rose-Alley salutation than Johnny Dryden's."

• 1869, Logan, William Hugh, A pedlar's^[sic] pack of ballads and songs:

  Duds and Cheats thou oft hast won, / […] / Cank and Dommerar thou couldst play, / Or Rum-maunder in one day; / And like an Abram-cove couldst pray, / Yet pass with Jybes well jerk'd away.

• 1902, Compton, Herbert, A Free Lance in a Far Land, page 94:

  What, you — you bit av a beak and trail. Ecod, but Bess is meat for your master, and that's me, as you'll soon know. She's an old wench o' mine, and I'll buss her when I choose, and ask no leave of an Abram cove of corporal like you afore I run you through the body."

• 1933, Summers, Montague, The Werewolf:

  So loathly was he and verminous they scarce could seize and bind him, but when haled before the magistrate he proved to be an abram-cove named Jacques Roulet, who with his brother Jean and a cousin Julien […]

• For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:Abraham man.

• [Francis Grose] (1788), “Abram cove”, in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 2nd corrected and enlarged edition, London: Printed for S. Hooper, […], OCLC 3138643.
• [Francis] Grose [et al.] (1811), “Abram cove”, in Lexicon Balatronicum. A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence. […], London: Printed for C. Chappell, […], OCLC 23927885.
• “Abram cove” in Albert Barrère and Charles G[odfrey] Leland, compilers and editors, A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant, volume I (A–K), Edinburgh: The Ballantyne Press, 1889–1890, pages 7–8.
• Farmer, John Stephen (1890) Slang and Its Analogues‎, volume 1, pages 9–10