As a slang adjective, however, game began as a synonym for “whorish”; in the 1698 Dictionary of the Canting Crew, it is defined as “at a Bawdy-house, Lewd Women,” and Farmer and Henley’s 1890 slang dictionary has an entry for game-woman defined as “a prostitute.” Although Cab Calloway's 1944 Hepster’s Dictionary defined gammin’ as merely “flirtatious,” the nonsexual slang meaning of the verb to game has long been “to swindle.”
But when was gaming, in its slangy, crapshooting sense, applied to a system? Earliest citation I can find in the Factiva database comes from the March 24, 1985, Sunday Oklahoman, in an article by Chris Casteel about DNR (do not resuscitate) orders in hospitals. The sponsor of state legislation dealing with this issue, Cal Hobson, was quoted saying, “We’re gaming the system to deal with the problem.”
- Safire: We’ve been ‘gaming the system’ for, oh, centuries now, Chron.com, November 21, 2004.
2. Luck, HBO’s horse-racing series, is about the other American pastime: gaming the system.
Early in the new HBO series Luck, a gangster’s chauffeur-cum-bodyguard, Gus Demitriou (Dennis Farina), goes to L.A.’s Santa Anita racetrack with his boss, Chester “Ace” Bern-stein (Dustin Hoffman), and makes a bet on a long shot. When the horse comes in, Gus clutches his winning ticket and says happily: “Don’t ever let anyone tell you this isn’t a great fucking country.”
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