1625. Bacon, Apothgm, No. 17. My Lord St. Albans said that wise Nature did Never put her precious jewels into a garret four stories high, and therefore that exceeding tall men had ever very empty heads. 1811. Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v. 1837. Barham, Ingold. Leg. What’s called the claret Flew over the garret. 2. (old).—The fob-pocket. To have one’s garret unfurnished, verb. phr. (common). To be crazy, stupid, lumpish. For synonyms, see Apartments and Balmy. Garreteer, subs. (thieves’). A thief whose speciality is to rob houses by entering skylights or garret-windows. Also dancer and dancing-master. For synonyms, see thieves. 2. (journalists’).—An impecunious author; a literary hack. 1849–61. Macaulay, Hist. of Eng., ch. xxv. Garreteers, who were never weary of calling the cousin of the Earls of Manchester and Sandwich an upstart. 1886. Shelley (quoted in Dowden’s Life), i., 47. Show them that we are no Grub-street garreteers. 1892. National Observer, 18 Mar., p. 453. Has proclaimed urbi et orbi that governments have no business to manufacture specious sentiment by greasing the palms of ignorant and greedy garreteers. Garret-master, subs. (trade).—A cabinet-maker who works on his own account, selling his manufacture to the dealers direct. 1851–61. Mayhew, Lond. Lab., ii., p. 376. These trading operatives are known by different names in different trades. In the shoe trade, for instance, they are called ‘chamber-masters,’ in the cabinet trade garret-masters, and in the cooper’s trade the name for them is ‘small trading-masters.’ Garrison-hack, subs. (common).—1. A woman given to indiscriminate flirtation with officers at a garrison. 1889. Daily Telegraph, 14 Feb. Lord Normantower, Philip’s dearest friend, to whom she, when a garrison-hack, had been engaged, and whom she had thrown over simply because he was poor and prospectless. 1890. Athenæum, 8 Feb., p. 176, c. 1. The heroine is a garrison-hack, but the hero is an Australian. 2. (common).—A prostitute; a soldier’s trull. For synonyms, see Barrack Hack and Tart. Garrotte, subs. (common).—A form of strangulation (see verb). [From the Spanish la garrota = a method of capital punishment, which consists in strangulation by means of an iron collar.] Verb. (common).—1. A method of robbery with violence, much practised some years ago. The victims were generally old or feeble men and women. Three hands were engaged: the front-stall who looked out in that quarter, the back-stall at the rear, and the ugly or nasty-man who did the work by passing his arm round his subject’s neck from behind, and so throttling him to insensibility. 1869. Greenwood, Seven Curses of Lond. Committed for trial for garrotting and nearly murdering a gentleman. 1873. Trollope, Phineas Redux, ch. xlvi. In those days there had been much garrotting in the streets.