IRISH TOYLES. Thieves who carry about pins, laces, and other pedlars wares, and under the pretence of offering their goods to sale, rob houses, or pilfer any thing they can lay hold of.
IRON. Money in general. To polish the king's iron with one's eyebrows; to look out of grated or prison windows, or, as the Irishman expresses them, the iron glass windows. Iron doublet; a prison. See STONE DOUBLET.
IRONMONGER'S SHOP. To keep an ironmonger's shop by the side of a common, where the sheriff sets one up; to be hanged in chains. Iron-bound; laced. An iron-bound hat; a silver-laced hat.
ISLAND. He drank out of the bottle till he saw the island; the island is the rising bottom of a wine bottle, which appears like an island in the centre, before the bottle is quite empty.
IVORIES. Teeth. How the swell flashed his ivories; how the gentleman shewed his teeth.ITCHLAND, or SCRATCHLAND. Scotland.
JUG. See DOUBLE JUG.
JUGGLER'S BOX. The engine for burning culprits in the hand. CANT.
JUKRUM. A licence.
JUMBLEGUT LANE. A rough road or lane.
JUMP. The jump, or dining-room jump; a species of robbery effected by ascending a ladder placed by a sham lamp- lighter, against the house intended to be robbed. It is so called, because, should the lamp-lighter be put to flight, the thief who ascended the ladder has no means of escaping but that of jumping down.
JUMPERS. Persons who rob houses by getting in at the windows. Also a set of Methodists established in South
Wales.
JURY LEG. A wooden leg: allusion to a jury mast, which is a temporary substitute for a mast carried away by a storm, or any other accident. SEA PHRASE.
JURY MAST. A JOURNIERE mast; i.e. a mast for the day or occasion.JUST-ASS. A punning appellation for a justice.
IVY BUSH. Like an owl in an ivy bush; a simile for a meagre or weasel-faced man, with a large wig, or very bushy hair.
KATE. A picklock. 'Tis a rum kate; it is a clever picklock. CANT.KEEL BULLIES. Men employed to load and unload the coal vessels.
KEELHAULING. A punishment in use among the Dutch seamen, in which, for certain offences, the delinquent is drawn once, or oftener, under the ship's keel: ludicrously defined, undergoing a great hard-ship.
TO KEEP. To inhabit. Lord, where do you keep? i.e. where are your rooms? ACADEMICAL PHRASE. Mother, your tit won't keep; your daughter will not preserve her virginity.
TO KEEP IT UP. To prolong a debauch. We kept it up finely last night; metaphor drawn from the game of shuttle- cock.
KEEPING CULLY. One who keeps a mistress, as he supposes, for his own use, but really for that of the public.KEFFEL. A horse. WELSH.
KELTER. Condition, order. Out of kelter; out of order.
KELTER. Money.
KEMP'S MORRIS. William Kemp, said to have been the original Dogberry in Much ado about Nothing, danced a morris from London to Norwich in nine days: of which he printed the account, A. D. 1600, intitled, Kemp's Nine Days Wonder, &c.
KEMP'S SHOES. Would I had Kemp's shoes to throw after you. BEN JONSON. Perhaps Kemp was a man remarkable for his good luck or fortune; throwing an old shoe, or shoes, after any one going on an important business, being by the vulgar deemed lucky.
KEN. A house. A bob ken, or a bowman ken; a well-furnished house, also a house that harbours thieves. Biting the ken; robbing the house. CANT.
KEN MILLER, or KEN CRACKER. A housebreaker. CANT.KENT-STREET EJECTMENT. To take away the street door: a method practised by the landlords in Kent-street, Southwark, when their tenants are above a fortnight's rent in
arrear.
KETCH. Jack Ketch; a general name for the finishers of the law, or hangmen, ever since the year 1682, when the office was filled by a famous practitioner of that name, of whom his wife said, that any bungler might put a man to death, but only her husband knew how to make a gentleman die sweetly. This officer is mentioned in Butler's Ghost, page 54, published about the year 1682, in the following lines:
Till Ketch observing he was chous'd, And in his profits much abus'd. In open hall the tribute dunn'd, To do his office, or refund.
Mr. Ketch had not long been elevated to his office, for the name of his predecessor Dun occurs in the former part of this poem, page 29:
For you yourself to act squire Dun, Such ignominy ne'er saw the sun.The addition of 'squire,' with which Mr. Dun is here dignified, is a mark that he had beheaded some state criminal for high treason; an operation which, according to custom for time out of mind, has always entitled the operator to that distinction. The predecessor of Dun was Gregory Brandon, from whom the gallows was called the Gregorian tree, by which name it is mentioned in the prologue to Mercurius Pragmaticus, tragi-comedy acted at Paris, &c. 1641:
This trembles under the black rod, and he Doth fear his fate from the Gregorian tree.Gregory Brandon succeeded Derrick. See DERRICK.
KETTLEDRUMS. Cupid's kettle drums; a woman's breasts, called by sailors chest and bedding.
KETTLE OF FISH. When a person has perplexed his affairs in general, or any particular business, he is said to have made a fine kettle of fish of it.
KICKS. Breeches. A high kick; the top of the fashion. It is all the kick; it is the present mode. Tip us your kicks, we'll have them as well as your lour; pull off your breeches, for we must have them as well as your money. A kick; sixpence. Two and a kick; half-a-crown. A kick in the guts; a dram of gin, or any other spirituous liquor. A kick up; a disturbance, also a hop or dance. An odd kick in one's gallop; a strange whim or peculiarity.
To KICK THE BUCKET. To die. He kicked the bucket one day: he died one day. To kick the clouds before the hotel door; i.e. to be hanged.
KICKERAPOO. Dead. NEGRO WORD.KICKSEYS. Breeches.
KICKSHAWS. French dishes: corruption of quelque chose.
KID. A little dapper fellow. A child. The blowen has napped the kid. The girl is with child.
TO KID. To coax or wheedle. To inveigle. To amuse a man or divert his attention while another robs him. The sneaksman kidded the cove of the ken, while his pall frisked the panney; the thief amused the master of the house, while his companion robbed the house.
KID LAY. Rogues who make it their business to defraud young apprentices, or errand-boys, of goods committed to their charge, by prevailing on them to execute some trifling message, pretending to take care of their parcels till they come back; these are, in cant terms, said to be on the kid lay.
KIDDER. A forestaller: see CROCKER. Kidders are also persons employed by the gardeners to gather peas.KIDDEYS. Young thieves.
KIDDY NIPPERS. Taylors out of work, who cut off the waistcoat pockets of their brethren, when cross-legged on their board, thereby grabbling their bit. CANT.
KIDNAPPER. Originally one who stole or decoyed children or apprentices from their parents or masters, to send them to the colonies; called also spiriting: but now used for all recruiting crimps for the king's troops, or those of the East India company, and agents for indenting servants for the plantations, &c.
KIDNEY. Disposition, principles, humour. Of a strange kidney; of an odd or unaccountable humour. A man of a different kidney; a man of different principles. KILKENNY. An old frize coat.
KILL CARE CLUB. The members of this club, styled also the Sons of Sound Sense and Satisfaction, met at their fortress, the Castle-tavern, in Paternoster-row.
KILL DEVIL. New still-burnt rum.KILL PRIEST. Port wine.
To KIMBAW. To trick, cheat or cozen; also to beat or to bully. Let's kimbaw the cull; let's bully the fellow. To set one's arms a-kimbaw, vulgarly pronounced a-kimbo, is to rest one's hands on the hips, keeping the elbows square, and sticking out from the body; an insolent bullying attitude. CANT.
KINCHIN. A little child. Kinchin coes; orphan beggar boys, educated in thieving. Kinchin morts; young girls under the like circumstances and training. Kinchin morts, or coes in slates; beggars' children carried at their mother's backs in sheets. Kinchin cove; a little man. CANT.
KING'S PLATE. Fetters.KING'S WOOD LION. An Ass. Kingswood is famous for the great number of asses kept by the colliers who inhabit that place.
KING'S BAD BARGAIN. One of the king's bad bargains; a malingeror, or soldier who shirks his duty.KING'S HEAD INN, or CHEQUER INN, IN NEWGATE STREET. The prison of Newgate.
KING JOHN'S MEN. He is one of king John's men, eight score to the hundred: a saying of a little undersized man.
KING OF THE GYPSIES. The captain, chief, or ringleader of the gang of misrule: in the cant language called also the upright man.
KING'S PICTURES. Coin, money.KINGDOM COME. He is gone to kingdom come, he is dead.
KIP. The skin of a large calf, in the language of the Excise-office.
KISS MINE A-SE. An offer, as Fielding observes, very frequently made, but never, as he could learn, literally accepted. A kiss mine a-se fellow; a sycophant.
KISSING CRUST. That part where the loaves have touched the oven.KIT. A dancing-master, so called from his kit or cittern, a small fiddle, which dancing-masters always carry about with them, to play to their scholars. The kit is likewise the whole of a soldier's necessaries, the contents of his knapsack: and is used also to express the whole of different commodities: as, Here, take the whole kit; i.e. take all.
KIT-CAT CLUB. A society of gentlemen, eminent for wit and learning, who in the reign of queen Anne and George I. met at a house kept by one Christopher Cat. The portraits of most of the members of this society were painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, of one size; thence still called the kit-cat size.
KITCHEN PHYSIC. Food, good meat roasted or boiled. A little kitchen physic will set him up; he has more need of a cook than a doctor.
KITTLE PITCHERING. A jocular method of hobbling or bothering a troublesome teller of long stories: this is done by contradicting some very immaterial circumstance at the beginning of the narration, the objections to which being settled, others are immediately started to some new particular of like consequence; thus impeding, or rather not suffering him to enter into, the main story. Kittle pitchering is often practised in confederacy, one relieving the other, by which the design is rendered less obvious.
KITTYS. Effects, furniture; stock in trade. To seize one's kittys; to take his sticks.KNACK SHOP. A toy-shop, a nick-nack-atory.
KNAPPERS POLL. A sheep's head. CANT.
KNAVE IN GRAIN. A knave of the first rate: a phrase borrowed from the dyehouse, where certain colours are said to be in grain, to denote their superiority, as being dyed with cochineal, called grain. Knave in grain is likewise a pun applied to a cornfactor or miller.
KNIGHT OF THE BLADE. A bully. KNIGHT OF THE POST. A false evidence, one that is ready to swear any thing for hire.KNIGHT OF THE RAINBOW. A footman: from the variety of colours in the liveries and trimming of gentlemen of that cloth.
KNIGHT OF THE ROAD. A highwayman.KNIGHT OF THE SHEERS. A taylor.
KNIGHT OF THE THIMBLE, or NEEDLE. A taylor or stay-maker.
KNIGHT OF THE WHIP. A coachman.
KNIGHT OF THE TRENCHER. A great eater.
KNIGHT AND BARROW PIG, more hog than gentleman. A saying of any low pretender to precedency.
KNOB. The head. See NOB.
KNOCK. To knock a woman; to have carnal knowledge of her. To knock off; to conclude: phrase borrowed from the blacksmith. To knock under; to submit.
KNOCK ME DOWN. Strong ale or beer, stingo.KNOT. A crew, gang, or fraternity. He has tied a knot with his tongue, that he cannot untie with his teeth: i.e. he is married.
KNOWING ONES. Sportsmen on the turf, who from
experience and an acquaintance with the jockies, are supposed to be in the secret, that is, to know the true merits or powers of each horse; notwithstanding which it often happens that the knowing ones are taken in.
KNUCKLES. Pickpockets who attend the avenues to public places to steal pocket-books, watches, &c. a superior kind of pickpockets. To knuckle to, to submit.
TO KNUCKLE ONE'S WIPE. To steal his handkerchief.KNUCKLE-DABS, or KNUCKLE-CONFOUNDERS. Ruffles.
KONOBLIN RIG. Stealing large pieces of coal from coalsheds. LACED MUTTON. A prostitute.
LACING. Beating. I'll lace your jacket handsomely.
LADDER. To go up the ladder to rest; to be hanged.
LADY. A crooked or hump-backed woman.
LADY OF EASY VIRTUE. A woman of the town, an impure, a prostitute.
LADYBIRDS. Light or lewd women.
LADY DACRE'S WINE. Gin.
LAG. A man transported. The cove was lagged for a drag. The man was transported for stealing something out of a waggon.
LAG FEVER. A term of ridicule applied to men who being under sentence of transportation, pretend illness, to avoid being sent from gaol to the hulks.
TO LAG. To drop behind, to keep back. Lag last; the last of a company.LAGE. Water. CANT.
LAGE OF DUDS. A buck of linen.
LAID ON THE SHELF, or LAID UP IN LAVENDER. Pawned.
To LAMB, or LAMBASTE. To beat. Lamb pye; a beating: from lambo.
LAMB'S WOOL. Apples roasted and put into strong ale.
LAMBSKIN MEN. The judges: from their robes lined and bordered with ermine.
LAMP. An eye. The cove has a queer lamp. The man has a blind or squinting eye.
LAND. How lies the land? How stands the reckoning? Who has any land in Appleby? a question asked the man at whose door the glass stands long, or who does not ciculate it in due time.
LAND LOPERS, or LAND LUBBERS. Vagabonds lurking about the country who subsist by pilfering. LAND PIRATES. Highwaymen.LANK SLEEVE. The empty sleeve of a one armed man. A fellow with a lank sleeve; a man who has lost an arm.
LANSPRISADO. One who has only two-pence in his pocket. Also a lance, or deputy corporal; that is, one doing the duty without the pay of a corporal. Formerly a lancier, or horseman, who being dismounted by the death of his horse, served in the foot, by the title of lansprisado, or lancepesato, a broken lance.
LANTHORN-JAWED. Thin-visaged: from their cheeksbeing almost transparent. Or else, lenten jawed; i.e. having
the jaws of one emaciated by a too rigid observation of Lent. Dark lanthorn; a servant or agent at court, who receives a bribe for his principal or master.
LARK. A boat.
LARK. A piece of merriment. People playing together jocosely.
LARRY DUGAN'S EYE WATER. Blacking: Larry Dugan was a famous shoe-black at Dublin.
LATCH. Let in.
LATHY. Thin, slender. A lathy wench; a girl almost as slender as a lath.
LATITAT. A nick-name for an attorney; from the name of a writ.
LAVENDER. Laid up in lavender; pawned.
LAUGH. To laugh on the wrong side of the mouth; to cry. I'll make him laugh on the wrong (or t'other) side of his mouth.
LAUNCH. The delivery, or labour, of a pregnant woman; a crying out or groaning.LAW. To give law to a hare; a sporting term, signifying to give the animal a chance of escaping, by not setting on the dogs till the hare is at some distance; it is also more figuratively used for giving any one a chance of succeeding in a scheme or project.
LAWFUL BLANKET. A wife.
LAY. Enterprize, pursuit, or attempt: to be sick of the lay. It also means a hazard or chance: he stands a queer lay; i.e. he is in danger. CANT.
LAYSTALL. A dunghill about London, on which the soil brought from necessary houses is emptied; or, in more technical terms, where the old gold collected at weddings by the Tom t--d man, is stored.
LAZY. As lazy as Ludman's dog, who leaned against the wall to bark. As lazy as the tinker, who laid down his budget to f--t.
LAZY MAN'S LOAD. Lazy people frequently take up more than they can safely carry, to save the trouble of coming a second time.
LAZYBONES. An instrument like a pair of tongs, for old or very fat people to take any thing from the ground without stooping.
LEAF. To go off with the fall of the leaf; to be hanged: criminals in Dublin being turned off from the outside of the prison by the falling of a board, propped up, and moving on a hinge, like the leaf of a table. IRISH TERM.
TO LEAK. To make water.LEAKY. Apt to blab; one who cannot keep a secret is said to be leaky.
LEAPING OVER THE SWORD. An ancient ceremonial said to constitute a military marriage. A sword being laid down on the ground, the parties to be married joined hands, when the corporal or serjeant of the, company repeated these words:
Leap rogue, and jump whore,And then you are married for evermore.
Whereupon the happy couple jumped hand in hand over the sword, the drum beating a ruffle; and the parties were ever after considered as man and wife.
LEAST IN SIGHT. To play least in sight; to hide, keep out of the way, or make one's self scarce.LEATHER. To lose leather; to be galled with riding on horseback, or, as the Scotch express it, to be saddle sick. To leather also meant to beat, perhaps originally with a strap: I'll leather you to your heart's content. Leather- headed; stupid. Leathern conveniency; term used by quakers for a stage-coach.
LEERY. On one's guard. See PEERY.LEFT-HANDED WIFE. A concubine; an allusion to an ancient German custom, according to which, when a man married his concubine, or a woman greatly his inferior, he gave her his left hand.
LEG. To make a leg; to bow. To give leg-bail and land security; to run away. To fight at the leg; to take unfair advantages: it being held unfair by back-sword players to strike at the leg. To break a leg; a woman who has had a bastard, is said to have broken a leg.
LEGGERS. Sham leggers; cheats who pretend to sell smuggled goods, but in reality only deal in old shop-keepers or damaged goods.
LENTEN FARE. Spare diet.LETCH. A whim of the amorous kind, out of the common way.
LEVITE. A priest or parson.
TO LIB. To lie together. CANT.
LIBBEGE. A bed. CANT.
LIBBEN. A private dwelling-house. CANT.
LIBKEN. A house to lie in. CANT.
TO LICK. To beat; also to wash, or to paint slightly over. I'll give you a good lick o' the chops; I'll give you a good stroke or blow on the face. Jack tumbled into a cow t--d, and nastied his best clothes, for which his father stept up, and licked him neatly.--I'll lick you! the dovetail to which is, If you lick me all over, you won't miss--.
LICKSPITTLE. A parasite, or talebearer.LIFT. To give one a lift; to assist. A good hand at a dead lift; a good hand upon an emergency. To lift one's hand to one's head; to drink to excess, or to drink drams. To lift or raise one's elbow; the same.
LIFT. See SHOPLIFTER, &c.LIFTER. A crutch.
LIG. A bed. See LIB.
LIGHT BOB. A soldier of the light infantry company.
LIGHT-FINGERED. Thievish, apt to pilfer.
LIGHT-HEELED. Swift in running. A light-heeled wench; one who is apt, by the flying up of her heels, to fall flat on her back, a willing wench.
LIGHT HOUSE. A man with a red fiery nose.LIGHT TROOPS. Lice; the light troops are in full march; the lice are crawling about.
LTGHTMANS. The day. CANT.
LIGHTNING. Gin. A flash of lightning; a glass of gin.
LIKENESS. A phrase used by thieves when the officers or turnkeys are examining their countenance. As the traps are taking our likeness; the officers are attentively observing us.
LILIPUTIAN. A diminutive man or woman: from Gulliver's Travels, written by Dean Swift, where an imaginary kingdom of dwarfs of that name is described.
LILY WHITE. A chimney-sweeper.LILY SHALLOW. (WHIP SLANG) A white driving hat.
LIMBS. Duke of limbs; a tall awkward fellow.
LIMB OF THE LAW. An inferior or pettyfogging attorney.
LIMBO. A prison, confinement.
To LINE. A term for the act of coition between dog and bitch.
LINE OF THE OLD AUTHOR. A dram of brandy. LINE. To get a man into a line, i.e. to divert his attention by a ridiculous or absurd story. To humbug.
LINGO. Language. An outlandish lingo; a foreign tongue. The parlezvous lingo; the French language.
LINEN ARMOURERS. Taylors.
LION. To tip the lion; to squeeze the nose of the party tipped, flat to his face with the thumb. To shew the lions and tombs; to point out the particular curiosities of any place, to act the ciceroni: an allusion to Westminster Abbey, and the Tower, where the tombs and lions are shewn. A lion is also a name given by the gownsmen of Oxford to an inhabitant or visitor. It is a standing joke among the city wits to send boys and country folks, on the first of April, to the Tower-ditch, to see the lions washed.
LIQUOR. To liquor one's boots; to drink before a journey: among Roman Catholics, to administer the extreme unction.LITTLE BARBARY. Wapping.
LITTLE BREECHES. A familiar appellation used to a little boy.
LITTLE CLERGYMAN. A young chimney-sweeper.
LITTLE EASE. A small dark cell in Guildhall, London, where disorderly apprentices are confined by the city chamberlain: it is called Little Ease from its being so low that a lad cannot stand upright in it.
LITTLE SNAKESMAN. A little boy who gets into a house through the sink-hole, and then opens the door for his accomplices: he is so called, from writhing and twisting like a snake, in order to work himself through the narrow passage.
LIVE LUMBER. A term used by sailors, to signify all landsmen on board their ships.LIVE STOCK. Lice or fleas.
LOAF. To be in bad loaf, to be in a disagreeable situation, or in trouble.
LOB. A till in a tradesman's shop. To frisk a lob; to rob a till. See FLASH PANNEY.
LOB. Going on the lob; going into a shop to get change for gold, and secreting some of the change.
LOB'S POUND. A prison. Dr. Grey, in his notes on Hudibras, explains it to allude to one Doctor Lob, a dissenting preacher, who used to hold forth when conventicles were prohibited, and had made himself a retreat by means of a trap door at the bottom of his pulpit. Once being pursued by the officers of justice, they followed him through divers subterraneous passages, till they got into a dark cell, from whence they could not find their way out, but calling to some of their companions, swore they had got into Lob's Pound.
LOBCOCK. A large relaxed penis: also a dull inanimate fellow.LOBKIN. A house to lie in: also a lodging.
LOBLOLLEY BOY. A nick name for the surgeon's servant on board a man of war, sometimes for the surgeon himself: from the water gruel prescribed to the sick, which is called loblolley.
LOBONIAN SOCIETY. A society which met at Lob Hall, at the King and Queen, Norton Falgate, by order of Lob the great.
LOBSCOUSE. A dish much eaten at sea, composed of salt beef, biscuit and onions, well peppered, and stewed together.
LOBSTER. A nick name for a soldier, from the colour of his clothes. To boil one's lobster, for a churchman to become a soldier: lobsters, which are of a bluish black, being made red by boiling. I will not make a lobster kettle of my ****, a reply frequently made by the nymphs of the Point at Portsmouth, when requested by a soldier to grant him a favour.
LOCK. A scheme, a mode. I must fight that lock; I must try that scheme.LOCK. Character. He stood a queer lock; he bore but an indifferent character. A lock is also a buyer of stolen goods, as well as the receptacle for them.
LOCK HOSPITAL. An hospital for venereal patients. LOCK UP HOUSE. A spunging house; a public house kept by sheriff's officers, to which they convey the persons they have arrested, where they practise every species of imposition and extortion with impunity. Also houses kept by agents or crimps, who enlist, or rather trepan, men to serve the East India or African company as soldiers.
LOCKERAM-JAWED. Thin-faced, or lanthorn-jawed. See LANTHORN JAWED.LOCKSMITH'S DAUGHTER. A key.
LOGGERHEAD. A blockhead, or stupid fellow. We three loggerheads be: a sentence frequently written under two heads, and the reader by repeating it makes himself the third. A loggerhead is also a double-headed, or bar shot of iron. To go to loggerheads; to fall to fighting.
LOLL. Mother's loll; a favourite child, the mother's darling,LOLL TONGUE. He has been playing a game at loll tongue; he has been salivated.
LOLLIPOPS. Sweet lozenges purchased by children.
TO LOLLOP. To lean with one's elbows on a table.
LOLLPOOP. A lazy, idle drone.
LOMBARD FEVER. Sick of the lombard fever; i.e. of the idles.
LONG ONE. A hare; a term used by poachers.
LONG. Great. A long price; a great price.
LONG GALLERY. Throwing, or rather trundling, the dice the whole length of the board.
LONG MEG. A jeering nam