A Dictionary of Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words

3

Mr. Thos. Lawrence, who promised an Etymological, Cant, and Slang Dictionary. Where is the book?

4

Richardson’s Dictionary.

5

Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed’s Chronicle.

6

The word Slang, as will be seen in the chapter upon that subject, is purely a Gipsey term, although now-a-days it refers to low or vulgar language of any kind, – other than cant. Slang and Gibberish in the Gipsey language are synonymous; but, as English adoptions, have meanings very different from that given to them in their original.

7

The vulgar tongue consists of two parts: the first is the Cant Language; the second, those burlesque phrases, quaint allusions, and nick names for persons, things, and places, which, from long uninterrupted usage, are made classical by prescription. —Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1st edition, 1785.

8

“Outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians.” 1530.

11

This very proverb was mentioned by a young Gipsey to Crabb, a few years ago. —Gipseys’ Advocate, p. 14.

12

I except, of course, the numerous writers who have followed Grellman, and based their researches upon his labours.

13

Gipseys of Spain, vol. i., p. 18.

14

Shakes. Hen. IV., part 2, act ii, scene 4.

15

It is easy to see how cheat became synonymous with “fraud,” when we remember that it was one of the most common words of the greatest class of cheats in the country.

16

I am reminded by an eminent philologist that the origin of QUEER is seen in the German, QUER, crooked, – hence “odd.” I agree with this etymology, but still have reason to believe that the word was first used in this country in a cant sense. Is it mentioned any where as a respectable term before 1500? If not, it had a vulgar or cant introduction into this country.

17

Booget properly signifies a leathern wallet, and is probably derived from the low Latin, BULGA. A tinker’s budget is from the same source.

18

Which, literally translated, means:

19

Who wrote about the year 1610.

20

Gipseys of Spain, vol. i., p. 18. Borrow further commits himself by remarking that “Head’s Vocabulary has always been accepted as the speech of the English Gipseys.” Nothing of the kind. Head professed to have lived with the Gipseys, but in reality filched his words from Decker and Brome.

21

The modern meanings of a few of the old cant words are given in brackets.

22

This is a curious volume, and is worth from one to two guineas. The Canting Dictionary was afterwards reprinted, word for word, with the title of The Scoundrel’s Dictionary, in 1751. It was originally published, without date, about the year 1710 by B. E., under the title of a Dictionary of the Canting Crew.

23

Bacchus and Venus, 1737.

24

Mayhew’s London Labour and London Poor, vol. iii., No. 43, Oct. 4th, 1851.

25

Mayhew (vol. i., p. 217), speaks of a low lodging-house, “in which there were at one time five university men, three surgeons, and several sorts of broken down clerks.” But old Harman’s saying, that “a wylde Roge is he that is borne a roge,” will perhaps explain this seeming anomaly.

26

Mr. Rawlinson’s Report to the General Board of Health, Parish of Havant, Hampshire.

27

Vol. v., p. 210.

28

Vol. i., pages 218 and 247.

29

See Dictionary.

30

Sometimes, as appears from the following, the names of persons and houses are written instead. “In almost every one of the padding-kens, or low lodging-houses in the country, there is a list of walks pasted up over the kitchen mantel piece. Now at St. Albans, for instance, at the – , and at other places, there is a paper stuck up in each of the kitchens. This paper is headed “Walks out of this Town,” and underneath it is set down the names of the villages in the neighbourhood at which a beggar may call when out on his walk, and they are so arranged as to allow the cadger to make a round of about six miles each day, and return the same night. In many of these papers there are sometimes twenty walks set down. No villages that are in any way “gammy” [bad] are ever mentioned in these papers, and the cadger, if he feels inclined to stop for a few days in the town, will be told by the lodging-house keeper, or the other cadgers that he may meet there, what gentlemen’s seats or private houses are of any account on the walk that he means to take. The names of the good houses are not set down in the paper for fear of the police.” —Mayhew, vol. i., p. 418.

31

Mayhew, vol. i., p. 218.

32

See Dictionary.

33

Mayhew, vol. i., p. 218.

34

Mr. Rawlinson’s Report to the General Board of Health, – Parish of Havant, Hampshire.

35

This term, with a singular literal downrightness, which would be remarkable in any other people than the French, is translated by them as the sect of Trembleurs.

36

Swift alludes to this term in his Art of Polite Conversation, p. 14. 1738.

37

See Notes and Queries, vol. i., p. 185. 1850.

38

He afterwards kept a tavern at Wapping, mentioned by Pope in the Dunciad.

39

Sportsman’s Dictionary, 1825, p. 15. I have searched the venerable magazine in vain for this Slang glossary.

40

Introduction to Bee’s Sportsman’s Dictionary, 1825.

41

The Gipseys use the word Slang as the Anglican synonyme for Romany, the continental (or rather Spanish) term for the Cingari or Gipsey tongue. Crabb, who wrote the Gipsies’ Advocate in 1831, thus mentions the word: – “This language [Gipsey] called by themselves Slang, or Gibberish, invented, as they think, by their forefathers for secret purposes, is not merely the language of one or a few of these wandering tribes, which are found in the European nations, but is adopted by the vast numbers who inhabit the earth.”

42

The word Slang assumed various meanings amongst costermongers, beggars, and vagabonds of all orders. It was, and is still, used to express cheating by false weights, a raree show, for retiring by a back door, for a watch-chain, and for their secret language.

43

North, in his Examen, p. 574, says, “I may note that the rabble first changed their title, and were called the mob in the assemblies of this [Green Ribbon] club. It was their beast of burden, and called first mobile vulgus, but fell naturally into the contraction of one syllable, and ever since is become proper English.” In the same work, p. 231, the disgraceful origin of SHAM is given.

44

It is rather singular that this popular journal should have contained a long article on Slang a short time ago.

45

The writer is quite correct in instancing this piece of fashionable twaddle. The mongrel formation is exceedingly amusing to a polite Parisian.

46

Savez vous cela?

47

From an early period politics and partyism have attracted unto themselves quaint Slang terms. Horace Walpole quotes a party nickname of February, 1742, as a Slang word of the day: – “The Tories declare against any further prosecution, if Tories there are, for now one hears of nothing but the BROAD-BOTTOM; it is the reigning Cant word, and means the taking all parties and people, indifferently, into the ministry.” Thus BROAD-BOTTOM in those days was Slang for coalition.

48

This is more especially an amusement with medical students, and is comparatively unknown out of London.

49

Edinburgh Review, October, 1853.

50

A term derived from the Record Newspaper, the exponent of this singular section of the Low, or so called Evangelical Church.

51

A preacher is said, in this phraseology, to be OWNED, when he makes many converts, and his converts are called his SEALS.

52

“All our newspapers contain more or less colloquial words; in fact, there seems no other way of expressing certain ideas connected with passing events of every-day life, with the requisite force and piquancy. In the English newspapers the same thing is observable, and certain of them contain more of the class denominated Slang words than our own.” —Bartlett’s Americanisms, p. x., 1859.

53

The terms leader and article can scarcely be called Slang, yet it would be desirable to know upon what authority they were first employed in their present peculiar sense.

54

For some account of the origin of these nicknames see under Mrs. Harris in the Dictionary.

55

See Dictionary.