cabbaging

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of cabbage.

   The tailor had been cabbaging fabric from wealthy clients for years.

   Cabbaging the leftover scraps was how he quietly supplemented his wages.

   Note

   One spelling carries several unrelated verbs. A plant can be cabbaging, forming a tight head of leaves. A person can be cabbaging on the sofa, in slang. A dishonest worker can be cabbaging goods, the use that takes an object. That object is the quickest test: cabbaging fabric is theft, while plain cabbaging is idling or heading up. Two uses have hardened into nouns, the idleness and the tailor's theft.

2. 2
   nounslangUKuncountable

   The state of being lazy or bored, with little to do and no urge to do it.

   After exams, she fell into days of pure cabbaging in front of the telly.

   All that cabbaging on the sofa left him oddly restless by evening.

   Similarloafing, lounging, idleness

   Note

   British slang that pictures a person as a vegetable, much as veg out does: idle, inert, faintly bored. It is an uncountable noun, so it is never preceded by a: you say days of cabbaging or a bit of cabbaging, never a cabbaging. Keep it to casual talk. A listener who does not know the slang may hear only the vegetable, or the tailor's theft.

3. 3
   nounslanguncountable

   A tailor's stealing of the offcuts of material left over while making a garment from a customer's own fabric.

   The master tailor lost his reputation after years of cabbaging came to light.

   Cabbaging the surplus broadcloth, the cutter built up enough for a coat of his own.

   Similarpilfering, theft, filching

   Note

   Trade slang for a very particular theft: the tailor quietly keeps leftover cloth that the customer paid for. Richard F. Burton's The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885) observes that tailors in the East were made to cut cloth in front of its owner to prevent it. The word takes no plural, and it has nothing to do with the idle, bored sense beyond the spelling.

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