1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

GREENWICH GOOSE. A pensioner of Greenwich Hospital.

GREGORIAN TREE. The gallows: so named from Gregory Brandon, a famous finisher of the law; to whom Sir William Segar, garter king of arms (being imposed on by Brooke, a herald), granted a coat of arms.

GREY BEARD. Earthen jugs formerly used in public house for drawing ale: they had the figure of a man with a large beard stamped on them; whence probably they took the name: see BEN JONSON'S PLAYS, BARTHOLOMEW FAIR, &c. &c. Dutch earthen jugs, used for smuggling gin on the coasts of Essex and Suffolk, are at this time called grey beards.

GREY MARE. The grey mare is the better horse; said of a woman who governs her husband.

GREY PARSON. A farmer who rents the tithes of the rector or vicar.

GRIG. A farthing. A merry grig; a fellow as merry as a grig: an allusion to the apparent liveliness of a grig, or young eel.

GRIM. Old Mr. Grim; death.

GRIMALKIN. A cat: mawkin signifies a hare in Scotland.

GRIN. To grin in a glass case; to be anatomized for murder: the skeletons of many criminals are preserved in glass cases, at Surgeons' hall.

GRINAGOG, THE CAT'S UNCLE. A foolish grinning fellow, one who grins without reason.

GRINDERS. Teeth. Gooseberry grinder; the breech. Ask bogey, the gooseberry grinder; ask mine a-se.

TO GRIND. To have carnal knowledge of a woman.

GROATS. To save his groats; to come off handsomely: at the universities, nine groats are deposited in the hands of an academic officer, by every person standing for a degree; which if the depositor obtains with honour, the groats are returned to him.

GROG. Rum and water. Grog was first introduced into the navy about the year 1740, by Admiral Vernon, to prevent the sailors intoxicating themselves with their allowance of rum, or spirits. Groggy, or groggified; drunk.

GROG-BLOSSOM. A carbuncle, or pimple in the face, caused by drinking.

GROGGED. A grogged horse; a foundered horse.

GROGHAM. A horse. CANT.

GROPERS. Blind men; also midwives.

GROUND SWEAT. A grave.

GROUND SQUIRREL. A hog, or pig. SEA TERM.

GRUB. Victuals. To grub; to dine.

GRUB STREET. A street near Moorfields, formerly the supposed habitation of many persons who wrote for the booksellers: hence a Grub-street writer means a hackney author, who manufactures booss for the booksellers.

GRUB STREET NEWS. Lying intelligence.

TO GRUBSHITE. To make foul or dirty.

GRUMBLE. To grumble in the gizzard; to murmur or repine.

He grumbled like a bear with a sore head.

GRUMBLETONIAN. A discontented person; one who is always railing at the times or ministry.

GRUNTER. A hog; to grunt; to groan, or complain of sickness.

GRUNTER'S GIG. A smoaked hog's face.

GRUNTING PECK. Pork, bacon, or any kind of hog's flesh.

GRUTS. Tea.

GUDGEON. One easily imposed on. To gudgeon; to swallow the bait, or fall into a trap: from the fish of that name, which is easily taken.

GULL. A simple credulous fellow, easily cheated.

GULLED. Deceived, cheated, imposed on.

GULLGROPERS. Usurers who lend money to the gamesters.

GUM. Abusive language. Come, let us have no more of your gum.

GUMMY. Clumsy: particularly applied to the ancles of men or women, and the legs of horses.

GUMPTION, or RUM GUMPTION. Docility, comprehension, capacity.

GUN. He is in the gun; he is drunk: perhaps from an allusion to a vessel called a gun, used for ale in the universities.

GUNDIGUTS. A fat, pursy fellow.

GUNNER'S DAUGHTER. To kiss the gunner's daughter; to be tied to a gun and flogged on the posteriors; a mode of punishing boys on board a ship of war.

GUNPOWDER. An old Woman. CANT.

GUTS. My great guts are ready to eat my little ones; my guts begin to think my throat's cut; my guts curse my teeth: all expressions signifying the party is extremely hungry.

GUTS AND GARBAGE. A very fat man or woman. More guts than brains; a silly fellow. He has plenty of guts, but no bowels: said of a hard, merciless, unfeeling person.

GUTFOUNDERED. Exceeding hungry.

GUT SCRAPER, or TORMENTOR of CATGUT. A fiddler.

GUTTER LANE. The throat, the swallow, the red lane. See RED LANE.

GUTTING A QUART POT. Taking out the lining of it: i. e. drinking it off. Gutting an oyster; eating it. Gutting a house; clearing it of its furniture. See POULTERER.

GUY. A dark lanthorn: an allusion to Guy Faux, the principal actor in the gunpowder plot. Stow the guy: conceal the lanthorn.

GUZZLE. Liquor. To guzzle; to drink greedily.

GUZZLE GUTS. One greedy of liquor.

GYBE, or JYBE. Any writing or pass with a seal.

GYBING. Jeering or ridiculing.

GYLES, or GILES. Hopping Giles; a nick name for a lame person: St. Giles was the tutelar saint of cripples.

GYP. A college runner or errand-boy at Cambridge, called at Oxford a scout. See SCOUT.

GYPSIES. A set of vagrants, who, to the great disgrace of our police, are suffered to wander about the country. They pretend that they derive their origin from the ancient Egyptians, who were famous for their knowledge in astronomy and other sciences; and, under the pretence of fortune-telling, find means to rob or defraud the ignorant and superstitious. To colour their impostures, they artificially discolour their faces, and speak a kind of gibberish peculiar to themselves. They rove up and down the country in large companies, to the great terror of the farmers, from whose geese, turkeys, and fowls, they take very considerable contributions.

When a fresh recruit is admitted into the fraternity, he is to take the following oath, administered by the principal maunder, after going through the annexed forms:

First, a new name is given him by which he is ever after to be called; then standing up in the middle of the assembly, and directing his face to the dimber damber, or principal man of the gang, he repeats the following oath, which is dictated to him by some experienced member of the fraternity:

I, Crank Cuffin, do swear to be a true brother, and that I will in all things obey the commands of the great tawney prince, and keep his counsel and not divulge the secrets of my brethren.

I will never leave nor forsake the company, but observe and keep all the times of appointment, either by day or by night, in every place whatever.

I will not teach any one to cant, nor will I disclose any of our mysteries to them.

I will take my prince's part against all that shall oppose him, or any of us, according to the utmost of my ability; nor will I suffer him, or any one belongiug to us, to be abused by any strange abrams, rufflers, hookers, pailliards, swaddlers, Irish toyles, swigmen, whip jacks, jarkmen, bawdy baskets, dommerars, clapper dogeons, patricoes, or curtals; but will defend him, or them, as much as I can, against all other outliers whatever. I will not conceal aught I win out of libkins or from the ruffmans, but will preserve it for the use of the company. Lastly, I will cleave to my doxy wap stiffly, and will bring her duds, marjery praters, goblers, grunting cheats, or tibs of the buttery, or any thing else I can come at, as winnings for her weppings.

The canters have, it seems, a tradition, that from the three first articles of this oath, the first founders of a certain boastful, worshipful fraternity (who pretend to derive their origin from the earliest times) borrowed both the hint and form of their establishment; and that their pretended derivation from the first Adam is a forgery, it being only from the first Adam Tiler: see ADAM TILER. At the admission of a new brother, a general stock is raised for booze, or drink, to make themselves merry on the occasion. As for peckage or eatables, they can procure without money; for while some are sent to break the ruffmans, or woods and bushes, for firing, others are detached to filch geese, chickens, hens, ducks (or mallards), and pigs. Their morts are their butchers, who presently make bloody work with what living things are brought them; and having made holes in the ground under some remote hedge in an obscure place, they make a fire and boil or broil their food; and when it is enough, fall to work tooth and nail: and having eaten more like beasts than men, they drink more like swine than human creatures, entertaining one another all the time with songs in the canting dialect.

As they live, so they lie, together promiscuously, and know not how to claim a property either in their goods or children: and this general interest ties them more firmly together than if all their rags were twisted into ropes, to bind them indissolubly from a separation; which detestable union is farther consolidated by the above oath.

They stroll up and down all summer-time in droves, and Dexterously pick pockets, while they are telling of fortunes; and the money, rings, silver thirribles, &c. which they get, are instantly conveyed from one hand to another, till the remotest person of the gang (who is not suspected because they come not near the person robbed) gets possession of it; so that, in the strictest search, it is impossible to recover it; while the wretches with imprecations, oaths, and protestations, disclaim the thievery.

That by which they are said to get the most money, is, when young gentlewomen of good families and reputation have happened to be with child before marriage, a round sum is often bestowed among the gypsies, for some one mort to take the child; and as that is never heard of more by the true mother and family, so the disgrace is kept concealed from the world; and, if the child lives, it never knows its parents.

H

HABERDASHER OF PRONOUNS. A schoolmaster, or usher.

HACKNEY WRITER. One who writes for attornies or booksellers.

HACKUM. Captain Hackum; a bravo, a slasher.

HAD'EM. He has been at Had'em, and came home by Clapham; said of one who has caught the venereal disease.

HAIR SPLITTER. A man's yard.

HALBERT. A weapon carried by a serjeant of foot. To get a halbert; to be appointed a serjeant. To be brought to the halberts; to be flogged a la militaire: soldiers of the infantry, when flogged, being commonly tied to three halberts, set up in a triangle, with a fourth fastened across them. He carries the halbert in his face; a saying of one promoted from a serjeant to a commission officer.

HALF A HOG. Sixpence.

HALF SEAS OVER. Almost drunk.

HAMLET. A high constable. Cant.

HAMS, or HAMCASES Breeches.

HAND. A sailor. We lost a hand; we lost a sailor. Bear a hand; make haste. Hand to fist; opposite: the same as tete-a-tete, or cheek by joul.

HAND AND POCKET SHOP. An eating house, where ready money is paid for what is called for.

HAND BASKET PORTION. A woman whose husband receives frequent presents from her father, or family, is said to have a hand-basket portion.

HANDLE. To know how to handle one's fists; to be skilful in the art of boxing. The cove flashes a rare handle to his physog; the fellow has a large nose.

HANDSOME. He is a handsome-bodied man in the face; a jeering commendation of an ugly fellow. Handsome is that handsome does: a proverb frequently cited by ugly women.

HANDSOME REWARD. This, in advertisements, means a horse-whipping.

To HANG AN ARSE. To hang back, to hesitate.

HANG GALLOWS LOOK. A thievish, or villainous appearance.

HANG IN CHAINS. A vile, desperate fellow. Persons guilty of murder, or other atrocious crimes, are frequently, after execution, hanged on a gibbet, to which they are fastened by iron bandages; the gibbet is commonly placed on or near the place where the crime was committed.

HANG IT UP. Score it up: speaking of a reckoning.

HANG OUT. The traps scavey where we hang out; the officers know where we live.

HANGER ON. A dependant.

HANGMAN'S WAGES. Thirteen pence halfpenny; which, according to the vulgar tradition, was thus allotted: one shilling for the executioner, and three halfpence for the rope,—N. B. This refers to former times; the hangmen of the present day having, like other artificers, raised their prices. The true state of this matter is, that a Scottish mark was the fee allowed for an execution, and the value of that piece was settled by a proclamation of James I. at thirteen pence halfpenny.

HANK. He has a hank on him; i.e. an ascendancy over him, or a hold upon him. A Smithfield hank; an ox, rendered furious by overdriving and barbarous treatment. See BULL HANK.

HANKER. To hanker after any thing; to have a longing after or for it.

HANS IN KELDER. Jack in the cellar, i.e. the child in the womb: a health frequently drank to breeding women or their husbands.

HARD. Stale beer, nearly sour, is said to be hard. Hard also means severe: as, hard fate, a hard master.

HARD AT HIS A-SE. Close after him.

HARE. He has swallowed a hare; he is drunk; more probably a HAIR, which requires washing down.

HARK-YE-ING. Whispering on one side to borrow money.

HARMAN. A constable. CANT.

HARMAN BECK. A beadle. CANT.

HARMANS. The stocks. CANT.

HARP. To harp upon; to dwell upon a subject. Have among you, my blind harpers; an expression used in throwing or shooting at random among the crowd. Harp is also the Irish expression for woman, or tail, used in tossing up in Ireland: from Hibernia, being represented with a harp on the reverse of the copper coins of that country; for which it is, in hoisting the copper, i.e. tossing up, sometimes likewise called music.

HARRIDAN. A hagged old woman; a miserable, scraggy, worn-out harlot, fit to take her bawd's degree: derived from the French word HARIDELLE, a worn-out jade of a horse or mare.

HARRY. A country fellow. CANT.—Old Harry; the Devil.

HARUM SCARUM. He was running harum scarum; said of any one running or walking hastily, and in a hurry, after they know not what.

HASH. To flash the hash; to vomit. CANT.

HASTY. Precipitate, passionate. He is none of the Hastings sort; a saying of a slow, loitering fellow: an allusion to the Hastings pea, which is the first in season.

HASTY PUDDING. Oatmeal and milk boiled to a moderate thickness, and eaten with sugar and butter. Figuratively, a wet, muddy road: as, The way through Wandsworth is quite a hasty pudding. To eat hot hasty pudding for a laced hat, or some other prize, is a common feat at wakes and fairs.

HAT. Old hat; a woman's privities: because frequently felt.

HATCHES. Under the hatches; in trouble, distress, or debt.

HATCHET FACE. A long thin face.

HAVIL. A sheep. CANT.

HAVY CAVY. Wavering, doubtful, shilly shally.

HAWK. Ware hawk; the word to look sharp, a bye-word when a bailiff passes. Hawk also signifies a sharper, in opposition to pigeon. See PIGEON. See WARE HAWK.

HAWKERS. Licensed itinerant retailers of different commodities, called also pedlars; likewise the sellers of news-papers. Hawking; an effort to spit up the thick phlegm, called OYSTERS: whence it is wit upon record, to ask the person so doing whether he has a licence; a punning allusion to the Act of hawkers and pedlars.

To HAZEL GILD. To beat any one with a hazel stick.

HEAD CULLY OF THE PASS, or PASSAGE BANK. The top tilter of that gang throughout the whole army, who demands and receives contribution from all the pass banks in the camp.

HEAD RAILS. Teeth. SEA PHRASE.

HEARING CHEATS. Ears. CANT.

HEART'S EASE. Gin.

HEARTY CHOAK. He will have a hearty choak and caper sauce for breakfast; i.e. he will be hanged.

HEATHEN PHILOSOPHER. One whose breech may be seen through his pocket-hole: this saying arose from the old philosophers, many of whom depised the vanity of dress to such a point, as often to fall into the opposite extreme.

TO HEAVE. To rob. To heave a case; to rob a house. To heave a bough; to rob a booth. CANT.

HEAVER. The breast. CANT.

HEAVERS. Thieves who make it their business to steal tradesmen's shop-books. CANT.

HECTOR. bully, a swaggering coward. To hector; to bully, probably from such persons affecting the valour of Hector, the Trojan hero.

HEDGE. To make a hedge; to secure a bet, or wager, laid on one side, by taking the odds on the other, so that, let what will happen, a certain gain is secured, or hedged in, by the person who takes this precaution; who is then said to be on velvet.

HEDGE ALEHOUSE. A small obscure alehouse.

HEDGE CREEPER. A robber of hedges.

HEDGE PRIEST. An illiterate unbeneficed curate, a patrico.

HEDGE WHORE. An itinerant harlot, who bilks the bagnios and bawdy-houses, by disposing of her favours on the wayside, under a hedge; a low beggarly prostitute.

HEELS. To he laid by the heels; to be confined, or put in prison. Out at heels; worn, or diminished: his estate or affairs are out at heels. To turn up his heels; to turn up the knave of trumps at the game of all-fours.

HEEL TAP. A peg in the heel of a shoe, taken out when it is finished. A person leaving any liquor in his glass, is frequently called upon by the toast-master to take off his heel-tap.

HELL. A taylor's repository for his stolen goods, called cabbage: see CABBAGE. Little hell; a small dark covered passage, leading from London-wall to Bell-alley.

HELL-BORN BABE. A lewd graceless youth, one naturally of a wicked disposition.

HELL CAT. A termagant, a vixen, a furious scolding woman. See TERMAGANT and VIXEN.

HELL HOUND. A wicked abandoned fellow.

HELL FIRE DICK. The Cambridge driver of the Telegraph. The favorite companion of the University fashionables, and the only tutor to whose precepts they attend.

HELTER SKELTER. To run helter skelter, hand over head, in defiance of order.

HEMP. Young hemp; an appellation for a graceless boy.

HEMPEN FEVER. A man who was hanged is said to have died of a hempen fever; and, in Dorsetshire, to have been stabbed with a Bridport dagger; Bridport being a place famous for manufacturing hemp into cords.

HEMPEN WIDOW. One whose husband was hanged.

HEN-HEARTED. Cowardly.

HEN HOUSE. A house where the woman rules; called also a SHE HOUSE, and HEN FRIGATE: the latter a sea phrase, originally applied to a ship, the captain of which had his wife on board, supposed to command him.

HENPECKED. A husband governed by his wife, is said to be henpecked.

HEN. A woman. A cock and hen club; a club composed of men and women.

HERE AND THEREIAN. One who has no settled place of residence.

HERRING. The devil a barrel the better herring; all equally bad.

HERRING GUTTED. Thin, as a shotten herring.

HERRING POND. The sea. To cross the herring pond at the king's expence; to be transported.

HERTFORDSHIRE KINDNESS. Drinking twice to the same person.

HICK. A country hick; an ignorant clown. CANT.

HICKENBOTHOM. Mr. Hickenbothom; a ludicrous name for an unknown person, similar to that of Mr. Thingambob. Hickenbothom, i.e. a corruption of the German word ickenbaum, i.e. oak tree.

HICKEY. Tipsey; quasi, hickupping.

HIDE AND SEEK. A childish game. He plays at hide and seek; a saying of one who is in fear of being arrested for debt, or apprehended for some crime, and therefore does not chuse to appear in public, but secretly skulks up and down. See SKULK.

HIDEBOUND. Stingy, hard of delivery; a poet poor in invention, is said to have a hidebound muse.

HIGGLEDY PIGGLEDY. Confusedly mixed.

HIGH EATING. To eat skylarks in a garret.

HIGH FLYERS. Tories, Jacobites.

HIGH JINKS. A gambler at dice, who, having a strong head, drinks to intoxicate his adversary, or pigeon.

HIGH LIVING. To lodge in a garret, or cockloft.

HIGH PAD. A highwayman. CANT.

HIGH ROPES. To be on the high ropes; to be in a passion.

HIGH SHOON, or CLOUTED SHOON. A country clown.

HIGH WATER. It is high water, with him; he is full of money.

HIGHGATE. Sworn at Highgate—a ridiculous custom formerly prevailed at the public-houses in Highgate, to administer a ludicrous oath to all travellers of the middling rank who stopped there. The party was sworn on a pair of horns, fastened on a stick: the substance of the oath was, never to kiss the maid when he could kiss the mistress, never to drink small beer when he could get strong, with many other injunctions of the like kind; to all which was added the saving cause of "unless you like it best." The person administering the oath was always to be called father by the juror; and he, in return, was to style him son, under the penalty of a bottle.

HIKE. To hike off; to run away. CANT.

HIND LEG. To kick out a hind leg; to make a rustic bow.

HINNEY, MY HONEY. A north country hinney, particularly a Northumbrian: in that county, hinney is the general term of endearment.

HISTORY OF THE FOUR KINGS, or CHILD'S BEST GUIDE TO THE GALLOWS. A pack of cards. He studies the history of the four kings assiduously; he plays much at cards.

HOAXING. Bantering, ridiculing. Hoaxing a quiz; joking an odd fellow. UNIVERSITY WIT.

HOB, or HOBBINOL, a clown.

HOB OR NOB. Will you hob or nob with me? a question formerly in fashion at polite tables, signifying a request or challenge to drink a glass of wine with the proposer: if the party challenged answered Nob, they were to chuse whether white or red. This foolish custom is said to have originated in the days of good queen Bess, thus: when great chimnies were in fashion, there was at each corner of the hearth, or grate, a small elevated projection, called the hob; and behind it a seat. In winter time the beer was placed on the hob to warm: and the cold beer was set on a small table, said to have been called the nob; so that the question, Will you have hob or nob? seems only to have meant, Will you have warm or cold beer? i.e. beer from the hob, or beer from the nob.

HOBBERDEHOY. Half a man and half a boy, a lad between both.

HOBBLED. Impeded, interrupted, puzzled. To hobble; to walk lamely.

HOBBLEDYGEE. A pace between a walk and a run, a dog-trot.

HOBBY. Sir Posthumous's hobby; one nice or whimsical in his clothes.

HOBBY HORSE. A man's favourite amusement, or study, is called his hobby horse. It also means a particular kind of small Irish horse: and also a wooden one, such as is given to children.

HOBBY HORSICAL. A man who is a great keeper or rider of hobby horses; one that is apt to be strongly attached to his systems of amusement.

HOBNAIL. A country clodhopper: from the shoes of country farmers and ploughmen being commonly stuck full of hob-nails, and even often clouted, or tipped with iron. The Devil ran over his face with hobnails in his shoes; said of one pitted With the small pox.

HOBSON'S CHOICE. That or none; from old Hobson, a famous carrier of Cambridge, who used to let horses to the students; but never permitted them to chuse, always allotting each man the horse he thought properest for his manner of riding and treatment.

HOCKS. vulgar appellation for the feet. You have left the marks of your dirty hocks on my clean stairs; a frequent complaint from a mop squeezer to a footman.

HOCKEY. Drunk with strong stale beer, called old hock. See HICKEY.

HOCKING, or HOUGHING. A piece of cruelty practised by the butchers of Dublin, on soldiers, by cutting the tendon of Achilles; this has been by law made felony.

HOCUS POCUS. Nonsensical words used by jugglers, previous to their deceptions, as a kind of charm, or incantation. A celebrated writer supposes it to be a ludicrous corruption of the words hoc est corpus, used by the popish priests in consecrating the host. Also Hell Hocus is used to express drunkenness: as, he is quite hocus; he is quite drunk.

HOD. Brother Hod; a familiar name for a bricklayer's labourer: from the hod which is used for carrying bricks and mortar.

HODDY DODDY, ALL A-SE AND NO BODY. A short clumsy person, either male or female.

HODGE. An abbreviation of Roger: a general name for a country booby.

HODGE PODGE. An irregular mixture of numerous things.

HODMANDODS. Snails in their shells.

HOG. A shilling. To drive one's hogs; to snore: the noise made by some persons in snoring, being not much unlike the notes of that animal. He has brought his hogs to a fine market; a saying of any one who has been remarkably successful in his affairs, and is spoken ironically to signify the contrary. A hog in armour; an awkward or mean looking man or woman, finely dressed, is said to look like a hog in armour. To hog a horse's mane; to cut it short, so that the ends of the hair stick up like hog's bristles. Jonian hogs; an appellation given to the members of St. John's College, Cambridge.