couch a hogshead

couch a hogshead (third-person singular simple present couches a hogshead, present participle couching a hogshead, simple past and past participle couched a hogshead)

1. (obsolete, Britain, thieves' cant) To lie down to sleep.
   • 1566, Harman, Thomas, A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors‎, T. Bensley, published 1814, page 66:

     I couched a hogshead in a Skypper this darkemans.

   • 1611, Middleton, Thomas, “The Roaring Girl”, in Bullen, Arthur Henry, editor, The Works of Thomas Middleton‎, volume 4, published 1885, Act 5, Scene 1, pages 128–129:

     Ben mort, shall you and I heave a bough, mill a ken, or nip a bung, and then we'll couch a hogshead under the ruffmans, and there you shall wap with me, and I'll niggle with you.

   • 1992, Morgan, Cynthia, Court of Shadows:

     Mayhap we have been in the same bousing ken or stalling ken at some time. Mayhap we have couched a hogshead at the same house in Southwark.

• See Thesaurus:go to bed

• [Francis Grose] (1788), “Couch a hogshead”, in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 2nd corrected and enlarged edition, London: Printed for S. Hooper, […], OCLC 3138643.
• “Couch a hogshead, to” 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, page 274.
• Farmer, John Stephen (1893) Slang and Its Analogues‎, volume 3, page 329