Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
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The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue dates from 1811 and this is probably the only full, uncensored and searchable version of this dictionary on the internet. All the original crudities have been restored and it offers an interesting perspective on Common English from the time of the Regency and Jane Austen.

Select a letter or type a word and click Find. Searches are automatically wild-carded and clicking on words in the first column will look for all occurrences of that word, or related word.

Example:You click A and one of the results is ARSE. If you now click on ARSE the full list of related content will be displayed.

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Entries releated to ARSE

 

AIR AND EXERCISE  He has had air and exercise, i.e. he has been whipped at the cart's tail; or, as it is generally, though more vulgarly, expressed, at the cart's arse.
 
ANCHOR  Bring your arse to an anchor, i.e. sit down. To let go an anchor to the windward of the law; to keep within the letter of the law. SEA WIT.
 
ARSE  To hang an arse; to hang back, to be afraid to advance. He would lend his arse and shite through his ribs; a saying of any one who lends his money inconsiderately. He would lose his arse if it was loose; said of a careless person. Arse about; turn round.
 
ARSY YARSEY  To fall arsy varsey, i.e. head over heels.
 
ASK, or AX MY ARSE  A common reply to any question; still deemed wit at sea, and formerly at court, under the denomination of selling bargains. See BARGAIN.
 
BANDBOX  Mine arse 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.
 
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 arse.
 
BEST  To the best in Christendom: i.e. the best arse in Christendom; a health formerly much in vogue.
 
BITER  A wench whose cunt is ready to bite her arse; a lascivious, rampant wench.
 
BLACK ARSE  A copper or kettle. The pot calls the kettle black arse.
 
BLIND CHEEKS  The breech. Buss blind cheeks; kiss mine arse.
 
BOGY  Ask bogy, i.e. ask mine arse. Sea wit.
 
BUM BAILIFF  A sheriff's officer, who arrests debtors; so called perhaps from following his prey, and being at their bums, or, as the vulgar phrase is, hard at their arses. Blackstone says, it is a corruption of bound bailiff, from their being obliged to give bond for their good behaviour.
 
BUTTON  A bad shilling, among coiners. His arse makes buttons; he is ready to bewray himself through fear.
 
CART  To put the cart before the horse; to mention the last part of a story first. To be flogged at the cart's arse or tail; persons guilty of petty larceny are frequently sentenced to be tied to the tail of a cart, and whipped by the common executioner, for a certain distance: the degree of severity in the execution is left to the discretion of the executioner, who, it is said, has cats of nine tails of all prices.
 
CHEEKS  Ask cheeks near cunnyborough; the repartee of a St. Gilse's fair one, who bids you ask her backside, anglice her arse. A like answer is current in France: any one asking the road or distance to Macon, a city near Lyons, would be answered by a French lady of easy virtue, 'Mettez votre nez dans mon cul, & vous serrez dans les Fauxbourgs.'
 
CLOSE  As close as God's curse to a whore's arse: close as shirt and shitten arse.
 
COLT VEAL  Coarse red veal, more like the flesh of a colt than that of a calf.
 
COOLER  The backside. Kiss my cooler. Kiss my arse. It is principally used to signify a woman's posteriors.
 
COW  To sleep like a cow, with a cunt at one's arse; said of a married man; married men being supposed to sleep with their backs towards their wives, according to the following proclamation: All you that in your beds do lie, Turn to your wives, and occupy: And when that you have done your best, Turn arse to arse, and take your rest.
 
CROWN OFFICE  The head. I fired into her keel upwards; my eyes and limbs Jack, the crown office was full; I fucked a woman with her arse upwards, she was so drunk, that her head lay on the ground.
 
CURE ARSE  A dyachilon plaister, applied to the parts galled by riding.
 
DAB  An adept; a dab at any feat or exercise. Dab, quoth Dawkins, when he hit his wife on the arse with a pound of butter.
 
DOWDY  A coarse, vulgar-looking woman.
 
FART  He has let a brewer's fart, grains and all; said of one who has bewrayed his breeches. Piss and fart. Sound at heart. Mingere cum bumbis, Res saluberrima est lumbis. I dare not trust my arse with a fart: said by a person troubled with a looseness.
 
FUNK  To smoke; figuratively, to smoke or stink through fear. I was in a cursed funk. To funk the cobler; a schoolboy's trick, performed with assafoettida and cotton, which are stuffed into a pipe: the cotton being lighted, and the bowl of the pipe covered with a coarse handkerchief, the smoke is blown out at the small end, through the crannies of a cobler's stall.
 
GORMAGON  A monster with six eyes, three mouths, four arms, eight legs, five live on one side and three on the other, three arses, two arses, and a cunt upon its back; a man on horseback, with a woman behind him.
 
GRAVE DIGGER  Like a grave digger; up to the arse in business, and don't know which way to turn.
 
GREASE  To bribe. To grease a man in the fist; to bribe him. To grease a fat sow in the arse; to give to a rich man. Greasy chin; a treat given to parish officers in part of commutation for a bastard: called also, Eating a child.
 
GREAT INTIMATE  As great as shirt and shitten arse.
 
GRINDERS  Teeth. Gooseberry grinder; the breech. Ask bogey, the gooseberry grinder; ask mine arse.
 
HANG AN ARSE  To hang back, to hesitate.
 
HARD AT HIS arse  Close after him.
 
HODDY DODDY, ALL ARSE AND NO BODY  A short clumsy person, either male or female.
 
HOP-O-MY-THUMB  A diminutive person, man or woman. She was such a-hop-o-my thumb, that a pigeon, sitting on her shoulder, might pick a pea out of her arse.
 
HOPPER-ARSED  Having large projecting buttocks: from their resemblance to a small basket, called a hopper or hoppet, worn by husbandmen for containing seed corn, when they sow the land.
 
HUM DURGEON  An imaginary illness. He has got the humdurgeon, the thickest part of his thigh is nearest his arse; i.e. nothing ails him except low spirits.
 
KISS MINE ARSE  An offer, as Fielding observes, very frequently made, but never, as he could learn, literally accepted. A kiss mine arse fellow; a sycophant.
 
MEDLAR  A fruit, vulgarly called an open arse; of which it is more truly than delicately said, that it is never ripe till it is as rotten as a turd, and then it is not worth a fart.
 
MERRY ARSE CHRISTIAN  A whore.
 
MINE ARSE ON A BANDBOX  An answer to the offer of any thing inadequate to the purpose for which it is wanted, just as a bandbox would be if used for a seat.
 
OPEN ARSE  A medlar. See MEDLAR.
 
POT  The pot calls the kettle black arse; one rogue exclaims against another.
 
SHITTING THROUGH THE TEETH  Vomiting. Hark ye, friend, have you got a padlock on your arse, that you shite through your teeth? Vulgar address to one vomiting.
 
SPOUT  To rehearse theatrically.
 
SPOUTING CLUB  A meeting of apprentices and mechanics to rehearse different characters in plays: thus forming recruits for the strolling companies.
 
STAMMEL, or STRAMMEL  A coarse brawny wench.
 
TARPAWLIN  A coarse cloth tarred over: also, figuratively, a sailor.
 
TROLLOP  A lusty coarse sluttish woman.
 
TROLLY LOLLY  Coarse lace once much in fashion.
 
WEAR ARSE  A one-horse chaise.
 
WIND-MILL  The fundament. She has no fortune but her mills; i.e. she has nothing but her cunt and arse.
 
WRINKLE  A wrinkle-bellied whore; one who has had a number of bastards: child-bearing leaves wrinkles in a woman's belly. To take the wrinkles out of any one's belly; to fill it out by a hearty meal. You have one wrinkle more in your arse; i.e. you have one piece of knowledge more than you had, every fresh piece of knowledge being supposed by the vulgar naturalists to add a wrinkle to that part.