Francis Grose - 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

BUTTOCK. A whore. CANT.

BUTTOCK BROKER. A bawd, or match-maker. CANT.

BUTTOCK BALL. The amorous congress. CANT.

BUTTOCK AND FILE. A common whore and a pick-pocket. Cant.

BUTTOCK AND TWANG, or DOWN BUTTOCK AND SHAM FILE. A common whore, but no pickpocket.

BUTTOCK AND TONGUE. A scolding wife.

BUTTOCKING SHOP. A brothel.

BUTTON. A bad shilling, among coiners. His a-se makes buttons; he is ready to bewray himself through fear. CANT.

BUZMAN. A pickpocket. CANT.

BUZZARD. A simple fellow. A blind buzzard: a pur-blind man or woman.

BYE BLOW. A bastard.

CABBAGE. Cloth, stuff, or silk purloined by laylors from their employers, which they deposit in a place called HELL, or their EYE: from the first, when taxed, with their knavery, they equivocally swear, that if they have taken any, they wish they may find it in HELL; or, alluding to the second, protest, that what they have over and above is not more than they could put in their EYE.—When the scrotum is relaxed or whiffled, it is said they will not cabbage.

CAB. A brothel. Mother: how many tails have you in your cab? how many girls have you in your bawdy house?

CACAFEOGO. A sh-te-fire, a furious braggadocio or bully huff.

CACKLE. To blab, or discover secrets. The cull is leaky, and cackles; the rogue tells all. CANT. See LEAKY.

CACKLER. A hen.

CACKLER'S KEN. A hen roost. CANT.

CACKLING CHEATS. Fowls. CANT.

CACKLING FARTS. Eggs. CANT.

CADDEE. A helper. An under-strapper.

CADGE. To beg. Cadge the swells; beg of the gentlemen.

CAFFAN. Cheese. CANT.

CAGG. To cagg; a military term used by the private soldiers, signifying a solemn vow or resolution not to get drunk for a certain time; or, as the term is, till their cagg is out: which vow is commonly observed with the strictest exactness. Ex. I have cagg'd myself for six months. Excuse me this time, and I will cagg myself for a year. This term is also used in the same sense among the common people of Scotland, where it is performed with divers ceremonies.

CAG. To be cagged. To be sulky or out of humour. The cove carries the cag; the man is vexed or sullen.

CAG MAGG. Bits and scraps of provisions. Bad meat.

CAGG MAGGS. Old Lincolnshire geese, which having been plucked ten or twelve years, are sent up to London to feast the cockneys.

CAKE, or CAKEY. A foolish fellow.

CALF-SKIN FIDDLE. A drum. To smack calf's skin; to kiss the book in taking an oath. It is held by the St. Giles's casuists, that by kissing one's thumb instead of smacking calf's skin, the guilt of taking a false oath is avoided.

CALVES. His calves are gone to grass; a saying of a man with slender legs without calves. Veal will be cheap, calves fall; said of a man whose calves fall away.

CALVES HEAD CLUB. A club instituted by the Independents and Presbyterians, to commemorate the decapitation of King Charles I. Their chief fare was calves heads; and they drank their wine and ale out of calves skulls.

CALIBOGUS. Rum and spruce beer, American beverage.

CALLE. A cloak or gown. CANT.

CAMBRIDGE FORTUNE. A wind-mill and a water-mill, used to signify a woman without any but personal endowments.

CAMBRIDGE OAK. A willow.

CAMBRADE. A chamber fellow; a Spanish military term. Soldiers were in that country divided into chambers, five men making a chamber, whence it was generally used to signify companion.

CAMESA. A shirt or shift. CANT. SPANISH.

CAMP CANDLESTICK. A bottle, or soldier's bayonet.

CAMPBELL'S ACADEMY. The hulks or lighters, on board of which felons are condemned to hard labour. Mr. Campbell was the first director of them. See ACADEMY and FLOATING ACADEMY.

CANARY BIRD. A jail bird, a person used to be kept in a cage; also, in the canting sense, guineas.

CANDLESTICKS. Bad, small, or untunable bells. Hark! how the candlesticks rattle.

CANDY. Drunk. IRISH.

CANE. To lay Cane upon Abel; to beat any one with a cane or stick.

CANK. Dumb.

CANNISTER. The head. To mill his cannister; to break his head.

CANNIKIN. A small can: also, in the canting sense, the plague.

CANT. An hypocrite, a double-tongue palavering fellow. See PALAVER.

CANT. To cant; to toss or throw: as, Cant a slug into your bread room; drink a dram. SEA WIT.

CANTICLE. A parish clerk.

CANTING. Preaching with a whining, affected tone, perhaps a corruption of chaunting; some derive it from Andrew Cant, a famous Scotch preacher, who used that whining manner of expression. Also a kind of gibberish used by thieves and gypsies, called likewise pedlar's French, the slang, &c. &c.

CANTERS, or THE CANTING CREW. Thieves, beggars, and gypsies, or any others using the canting lingo. See LINGO.

CANTERBURY STORY. A long roundabout tale.

TO CAP. To take one's oath. I will cap downright; I will swear home. CANT.

TO CAP. To take off one's hat or cap. To cap the quadrangle; a lesson of humility, or rather servility, taught undergraduates at the university, where they are obliged to cross the area of the college cap in hand, in reverence to the fellows who sometimes walk there. The same ceremony is observed on coming on the quarter deck of ships of war, although no officer should be on it.

TO CAP. To support another's assertion or tale. To assist a man in cheating. The file kidded the joskin with sham books, and his pall capped; the deep one cheated the countryman with false cards, and his confederate assisted in the fraud.

CAP ACQUAINTANCE. Persons slightly acquainted, or only so far as mutually to salute with the hat on meeting. A woman who endeavours to attract the notice of any particular man, is said to set her cap at him.

CAPER MERCHANT. A dancing master, or hop merchant; marchand des capriolles. FRENCH TERM.—To cut papers; to leap or jump in dancing. See HOP MERCHANT.

CAPPING VERSES. Repeating Latin Verses in turn, beginning with the letter with which the last speaker left off.

CAPON. A castrated cock, also an eunuch.

CAPRICORNIFIED. Cuckolded, hornified.

CAPSIZE. To overturn or reverse. He took his broth till he capsized; he drank till he fell out of his chair. SEA TERM.

CAPTAIN. Led captain; an humble dependant in a great family, who for a precarious subsistence, and distant hopes of preferment, suffers every kind of indignity, and is the butt of every species of joke or ill-humour. The small provision made for officers of the army and navy in time of peace, obliges many in both services to occupy this wretched station. The idea of the appellation is taken from a led horse, many of which for magnificence appear in the retinues of great personages on solemn occasions, such as processions, &c.

CAPTAIN COPPERTHORNE'S CREW. All officers; a saying of a company where everyone strives to rule.

CAPTAIN LIEUTENANT. Meat between veal and beef, the flesh of an old calf; a military simile, drawn from the officer of that denomination, who has only the pay of a lieutenant, with the rank of captain; and so is not entirely one or the other, but between both.

CAPTAIN PODD. A celebrated master of a puppet-shew, in Ben Johnson's time, whose name became a common one to signify any of that fraternity.

CAPTAIN QUEERNABS. A shabby ill-dressed fellow.

CAPTAIN SHARP. A cheating bully, or one in a set of gamblers, whose office is to bully any pigeon, who, suspecting roguery, refuses to pay what he has lost. CANT.

CAPTAIN TOM. The leader of a mob; also the mob itself.

CARAVAN. A large sum of money; also, a person cheated of such sum. CANT.

CARBUNCLE FACE. A red face, full of pimples.

CARDINAL. A cloak in fashion about the year 1760.

To CAROUSE. To drink freely or deep: from the German word expressing ALL OUT.

CARRIERS. A set of rogues who are employed to look out and watch upon the roads, at inns, &c. in order to carry information to their respective gangs, of a booty in prospect.