dolly shop

English

Etymology

(pawn shop): After the 19th-century practice of using a black doll to mark out their shops.

Noun

dolly shop (plural dolly shops)

1. (UK, obsolete) An unlicensed pawn shop where rags, old junk, and like items are bought and sold.
2. (UK, obsolete) A sweetshop furnished with the gambling device called a dolly.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “dolly shop”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

References

• (sweetshop with gambling device): John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary