Bile (old slang), an old term used for the female organ of generation.
Bilk (common), to defraud, to cheat, to obtain goods without paying for them, to cheat the driver of a hackney carriage or a girl from whom one has received the sexual favour; a bilk, a deception. The term has long been in use.
And all the vile companions of a street
Keep a perpetual bawling at the door:
Who beat the bawd last night? who bilkt the whore?
I don't intend to bilk my lodgings.—Fielding: Tom Jones.
But as upon the scene I cast
My wond'ring gaze, a friend went past.
His nose was red, he reeled along,
And when I asked him what was wrong,
Strong drink, he said, was (hic!) a bilk,
And so he had been drinking—milk!
To "do a bilk," to defraud, specially used in the case of prostitutes who are cheated, in the French slang "poser un lapin." Most etymologists derive the word bilk from the Gothic bilaikan, to mock, to deride.
Bilk, as provincial or old English, meaning to cheat or defraud (Wright), is a form of balk, which has the same meaning, in the sense of hindering a man in his rights. Balk, to hinder, is, according to Skeat (Etymol. Dict.) from balk, a beam or bar; to put a balk or bar in a man's way. Anglo-Saxon balea. But as English it is probably from a Danish source, bjæḷka, Old Norse bialki (Ettmüller, Lex. Ang. Saxonicum), which brings us directly to bilk.
"Bilking the blues," in prison slang, is evading the police. In society a man who, though never actually found out, is strongly suspected of cheating at cards, would be called a bilk.
Bilker (common), same meaning as bilk in the sense of cheat, but specially applied to rascals who defraud prostitutes or cabmen.
A third and frequent means of evading payment of cab fares is for riders late at night, or in the small hours of the morning, to stealthily get out of the vehicles in motion, and then run off unobserved. Some of these malpractitioners have become so skilful in this action that they have left the cabs and gently closed the door afterwards without being seen, when they were being driven along at six or seven miles an hour. In a few instances the more expert of these bilkers have even jumped out of "hansoms" in dark roads or lanes unperceived by their drivers when the "two-wheelers" have been running at eight or nine miles an hour.—Tit Bits.
(Popular), one who gets a bed at a lodging-house and does not pay for it.
Besides, the sympathies of the other lodgers are always with the bilker, and if they took any part in a scuffle, should such a thing arise, it would be in his favour and against the porter.—Thor Fredur: Sketches from Shady Places.
Bilking (popular), explained by quotation.
