Francis Grose - 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

BACON. He has saved his bacon; he has escaped. He has a good voice to beg bacon; a saying in ridicule of a bad voice.

BACON-FACED. Full-faced.

BACON FED. Fat, greasy.

BACK GAMMON PLAYER. A sodomite.

BACK DOOR (USHER, or GENTLEMAN OF THE). The same.

BAD BARGAIN. One of his majesty's bad bargains; a worthless soldier, a malingeror. See MALINGEROR.

BADGE. A term used for one burned in the hand. He has got his badge, and piked; he was burned in the hand, and is at liberty. Cant.

BADGE-COVES. Parish Pensioners. Cant.

BADGERS. A crew of desperate villains who robbed near rivers, into which they threw the bodies of those they murdered. Cant.

BAG. He gave them the bag, i.e. left them.

BAG OF NAILS. He squints like a bag of nails; i. e. his eyes are directed as many ways as the points of a bag of nails. The old BAG OF NAILS at Pimlico; originally the BACCHANALS.

BAGGAGE. Heavy baggage; women and children. Also a familiar epithet for a woman; as, cunning baggage, wanton baggage, &c.

BAKERS DOZEN. Fourteen; that number of rolls being allowed to the purchasers of a dozen.

BAKER-KNEE'D. One whose knees knock together in walking, as if kneading dough.

BALDERDASH. Adulterated wine.

BALLOCKS. The testicles of a man or beast; also a vulgar nick name for a parson. His brains are in his ballocks, a cant saying to designate a fool.

BALUM RANCUM. A hop or dance, where the women are all prostitutes. N. B. The company dance in their birthday suits.

BALSAM. Money.

BAM. A jocular imposition, the same as a humbug. See HUMBUG.

TO BAM. To impose on any one by a falsity; also to jeer or make fun of any one.

TO BAMBOOZLE. To make a fool of any one, to humbug or impose on him.

BANAGHAN. He beats Banaghan; an Irish saying of one who tells wonderful stories. Perhaps Banaghan was a minstrel famous for dealing in the marvellous.

BANDBOX. Mine a-se on a bandbox; an answer to the offer of any thing inadequate to the purpose for which it is proffered, like offering a bandbox for a seat.

BANBURY STORY OF A COCK AND A BULL. A roundabout, nonsensical story.

BANDOG. A bailiff or his follower; also a very fierce mastiff: likewise, a bandbox. CANT.

BANG UP. (WHIP.) Quite the thing, hellish fine. Well done. Compleat. Dashing. In a handsome stile. A bang up cove; a dashing fellow who spends his money freely. To bang up prime: to bring your horses up in a dashing or fine style: as the swell's rattler and prads are bang up prime; the gentleman sports an elegant carriage and fine horses.

TO BANG. To beat.

BANGING. Great; a fine banging boy.

BANG STRAW. A nick name for a thresher, but applied to all the servants of a farmer.

BANKRUPT CART. A one-horse chaise, said to be so called by a Lord Chief Justice, from their being so frequently used on Sunday jaunts by extravagant shop-keepers and tradesmen.

BANKS'S HORSE. A horse famous for playing tricks, the property of one Banks. It is mentioned in Sir Walter Raleigh's Hist. of the World, p. 178; also by Sir Kenelm Digby and Ben Jonson.

BANTLING. A young child.

BANYAN DAY. A sea term for those days on which no meat is allowed to the sailors: the term is borrowed from the Banyans in the East Indies, a cast that eat nothing that had life.

BAPTIZED, OR CHRISTENED. Rum, brandy, or any other spirits, that have been lowered with water.

BARBER'S CHAIR. She is as common as a barber's chair, in which a whole parish sit to be trimmed; said of a prostitute.

BARBER'S SIGN. A standing pole and two wash balls.

BARGAIN. To sell a bargain; a species of wit, much in vogue about the latter end of the reign of Queen Anne, and frequently alluded to by Dean Swift, who says the maids of honour often amused themselves with it. It consisted in the seller naming his or her hinder parts, in answer to the question, What? which the buyer was artfully led to ask. As a specimen, take the following instance: A lady would come into a room full of company, apparently in a fright, crying out, It is white, and follows me! On any of the company asking, What? she sold him the bargain, by saying, Mine a-e.

BARGEES. (CAMBRIDGE.) Barge-men on the river.

BARKER. The shopman of a bow-wow shop, or dealer in second hand clothes, particularly about Monmouth-Street, who walks before his master's door, and deafens every passenger with his cries of—Clothes, coats, or gowns—what d'ye want, gemmen?—what d'ye buy? See BOW-WOW SHOP.

BARKSHIRE. A member or candidate for Barkshire, said of one troubled with a cough, vulgarly styled barking.

BARKING IRONS. Pistols, from their explosion resembling the bow-wow or barking of a dog. IRISH.

BARN. A parson's barn; never so full but there is still room, for more. Bit by a barn mouse, tipsey, probably from an allusion to barley.

BARNABY. An old dance to a quick movement. See Cotton, in his Virgil Travesti; where, speaking of Eolus he has these lines, Bounce cry the port-holes, out they fly, And make the world dance Barnaby.

BARNACLE. A good job, or snack easily got: also shellfish growing at the bottoms of ships; a bird of the goose kind; an instrument like a pair of pincers, to fix on the noses of vicious horses whilst shoeing; a nick name for spectacles, and also for the gratuity given to grooms by the buyers and sellers of horses.

BARREL FEVER. He died of the barrel fever; he killed himself by drinking.

BARROW MAN. A man under sentence of transportation; alluding to the convicts at Woolwich, who are principally employed in wheeling barrows full of brick or dirt.

BARTHOLOMEW BABY. A person dressed up in a tawdry manner, like the dolls or babies sold at Bartholomew fair.

BASKET. An exclamation frequently made use of in cock-pits, at cock-fightings, where persons refusing or unable to pay their losings, are adjudged by that respectable assembly to be put into a basket suspended over the pit, there to remain during that day's diversion: on the least demur to pay a bet, Basket is vociferated in terrorem. He grins like a basket of chips: a saying of one who is on the broad grin.

BASKET-MAKING. The good old trade of basket-making; copulation, or making feet for children's stockings.

BASTARD. The child of an unmarried woman.

BASTARDLY GULLION. A bastard's bastard.

TO BASTE. To beat. I'll give him his bastings, I'll beat him heartily.

BASTING. A beating.

BASTONADING. Beating any one with a stick; from baton, a stick, formerly spelt baston.

BAT. A low whore: so called from moving out like bats in the dusk of the evening.

BATCH. We had a pretty batch of it last night; we had a hearty dose of liquor. Batch originally means the whole quantity of bread baked at one time in an oven.

BATTNER. An ox: beef being apt to batten or fatten those that eat it. The cove has hushed the battner; i.e. has killed the ox.

BATCHELOR'S FARE. Bread and cheese and kisses.

BATCHELOR'S SON. A bastard.

BATTLE-ROYAL. A battle or bout at cudgels or fisty-cuffs, wherein more than two persons are engaged: perhaps from its resemblance, in that particular, to more serious engagements fought to settle royal disputes.

BAWBEE. A halfpenny. Scotch.

BAWBELS, or BAWBLES. Trinkets; a man's testicles.

BAWD. A female procuress.

BAWDY BASKET. The twenty-third rank of canters, who carry pins, tape, ballads, and obscene books to sell, but live mostly by stealing. Cant.

BAWDY-HOUSE BOTTLE. A very small bottle; short measure being among the many means used by the keepers of those houses, to gain what they call an honest livelihood: indeed this is one of the least reprehensible; the less they give a man of their infernal beverages for his money, the kinder they behave to him.

BAY FEVER. A term of ridicule applied to convicts, who sham illness, to avoid being sent to Botany Bay.