As Burns was made a gauger, so Johnson might have been made a Lord, or at least a Groom of the Bedchamber.

My friend, "the sweet Harp-String" (I give no more than his Irish name for fear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest heart, but then he supplies the potheen-makers with grain from his own fields.

But now and then a landlord or an agent or a gauger will go by begging his bread, to show how God divides the righteous from the unrighteous.

He was made an exciseman or gauger, at a salary of £50 a year, and he followed that occupation for the few remaining years of his life.

[Coll.], police constable, police sergeant; sbirro^, alguazil^, gendarme, kavass^, lictor^, mace bearer, huissier [Fr.], bedel^; tithingman^. press gang; exciseman^, gauger, gager^, customhouse officer, douanier [Fr.].

The windward anchors creep, And the Gauger's fast asleep, And the kegs are bobbing one, two, three, Says the Lander:

We will take this smuggling gang, And those that fight shall hang Dingle dangle from the execution tree, Says the Gauger: Dingle dangle with the weary moon to see.

And here's to Blackbeard, to Father Blackbeard, who watches over our treasure better than he did over his own; for were it not the fear of him that keeps off idle feet and prying eyes, we should have the gaugers in, and our store ransacked twenty times.'

Weighers and gaugers.

One night Sir Condy was drinking with the excise-man and the gauger, and wagered that he could do it.

Sure if we had any of the tripe I sent yesterday to the gauger.

Under an act thus dubiously worded, and in a country which makes Bancroft a collector of the customs and Hawthorne a weigher and gauger, the works of an Alison and a Tupper would be put beyond the reach of all but the immensely rich.

Gauge and gauger are pronounced gage and gager, and sometimes written so.

He was a bad gauger for King George, but he was an admirable scribe for a revolution conducted on constitutional principles.