Fork out

The expression ‘fork out’ entered the language in England in the mid-19th century. On the face of it there doesn’t appear to be a connection between forking and paying/handing over.

The connection is that fork was a slang term for ‘pickpocket’. This is recorded in Nathan Bailey’s, Etymological English Dictionary, 1737:

“FORK, a Pick-pocket. Lets Fork him; Let us pick that Man’s Pocket. It is done by thrusting the Fingers, strait, stiff, open and very quick into the Pocket, and so closing them, hook what can be held between them.”

The term ‘fork-out’ came to be used to mean ‘pay/surrender’ or ‘hand over’ money. The allusion was to the fingers of one’s hand being used to hold the money, like a pickpocket.

The first example that I can find of ‘fork out’ in print is from the London newspaper The Observer, April 1825:

He was obliged to fork out a good deal of money to some creditors.

The connection between forks and fingers was also used in the derivation of another slang phrase – ‘put up your dukes‘. By a Cockney rhyming slang route, that links fingers, that is forks, to dukes (of Yorks).