Brewer's: Shylock

The grasping Jew, who “would kill the thing he hates.” (Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice.)

Shylock

(A). A grasping moneylender. (See above.)

“Respectable people withdrew from the trade, and the money-lending business was entirely in the hands of the Shylocks. ... Those who had to borrow coin were obliged to submit to the expensive subterfuges of the Shylocks, from whose net once caught, there was little chance of escape,” —A. Egmont-Hake: Free Trade in Capital, chap. vii.

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