Emily Dickinson Lexicon

SHARK, v.i.

1. To play the petty thief; or rather to live by shifts and petty stratagems. [In New England, the common pronunciation is shurk, but the word rarely implies fraud.]
2. To cheat; to trick. [Low.] – Ainsworth.
3. To fawn upon for a dinner; to beg. Johnson. To shark out, to slip out or escape by low artifices. [Vulgar.]