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Mob law, law administered by the mob; lynch law. -- Swell mob, well dressed thieves and swindlers, regarded collectively. [Slang] Dickens.

To acquire sharpness of figure or features; hence, to look thin or sicky. "Dwindle, peak, and pine." Shak.

To pluck; to fleece; to swindle by tricks in gambling. [Slang] Smart. He's pigeoned and undone. Observer.

A plan; an artifice; a swindle; a trick. [Slang] It was n't a bad plant, that of mine, on Fikey. Dickens.

A rascal; a swindler; a rogue. De Quincey.

To play the petty thief; to practice fraud or trickery; to swindle. Neither sharks for a cup or a reckoning. Bp. Earle.

To swindle by means of small cups or thimbles, and a pea or small ball placed under one of them and quickly shifted to another, the victim laying a wager that he knows under which cup it is; hence, to cheat by any trick.

ed; to lose bulk, substance, strength, value, or the like, gradually; to be consumed; to dwindle; to grow less. The time wasteth night and day. Chaucer. The barrel of meal shall not waste. 1 Kings xvii. 14. But man dieth, and wasteth away. Job xiv. 10.

One of the longitudinal ribs or ridges on the barrel of a capstan or a windless; -- usually in the plural; as, the whelps of a windlass.

a swindler who pretends to tap wires or otherwise intercept advance telegraphic news for betting. -- Wire tapping.