Brewer's: Hang Out

Where do you hang out? Where are you living, or lodging? The allusion is to the custom, now restricted to public-houses, but once very general, of hanging before one's shop a sign indicating the nature of the business carried on within. Druggists often still place coloured bottles in their windows, and some tobacconists place near their shop door the statue of a Scotchman. (See Dickens: Pickwick Papers chap. xxx.)

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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