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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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Entries releated to BEGGAR
| AUTEM MORT | A married woman; also a female beggar with several children hired or borrowed to excite charity. | |
| BEGGAR MAKER | A publican, or ale-house keeper. | |
| BEGGAR'S BULLETS | Stones. The beggar's bullets began to fly, i.e. they began to throw stones. | |
| BELLY PLEA | The plea of pregnancy, generally adduced by female felons capitally convicted, which they take care to provide for, previous to their trials; every gaol having, as the Beggar's Opera informs us, one or more child getters, who qualify the ladies for that expedient to procure a respite. | |
| BENISON | The beggar's benison: May your prick and purse never fail you. | |
| BLIND HARPERS | Beggars counterfeiting blindness, playing on fiddles, etc. | |
| BUGABOE | A scare-babe, or bully-beggar. | |
| BULL BEGGAR, or BULLY BEGGAR | An imaginary being with which children are threatened by servants and nurses, like raw head and bloody bones. | |
| BUNTER | A low dirty prostitute, half whore and half beggar. | |
| BUSS BEGGAR | An old superannuated fumbler, whom none but beggars will suffer to kiss them. | |
| CHATTS | Lice: perhaps an abbreviation of chattels, lice being the chief live stock of chattels of beggars, gypsies, and the rest of the canting crew. - Also, according to the canting academy, the gallows. | |
| CLAPPERDOGEON | A beggar born. | |
| CLEYMES | Artificial sores, made by beggars to excite charity. | |
| CRUISERS | Beggars, or highway spies, who traverse the road, to give intelligence of a booty; also rogues ready to snap up any booty that may offer, like privateers or pirates on a cruise. | |
| DOMMERER | A beggar pretending that his tongue has been cutout by the Algerines, or cruel and blood-thirsty Turks, or else that he yas born deaf and dumb. | |
| DOPEY | A beggar's trull. | |
| DOXIES | She beggars, wenches, whores. | |
| EAT | To eat like a beggar man, and wag his under jaw; a jocular reproach to a proud man. To eat one's words; to retract what one has said. | |
| FERMERDY BEGGARS | All those who have not the sham sores or clymes. | |
| FILCH, or FILEL | A beggar's staff, with an iron hook at the end, to pluck clothes from an hedge, or any thing out of a casement. Filcher; the same as angler. Filching cove; a man thief. Filching mort; a woman thief. | |
| FLYING CAMPS | Beggars plying in a body at funerals. | |
| FOOTMAN'S MAWND | An artificial sore made with unslaked lime, soap, and the rust of old iron, on the back of a beggar's hand, as if hurt by the bite or kick of a horse. | |
| HEDGE WHORE | An itinerant harlot, who bilks the bagnios and bawdy-houses, by disposing of her favours on the wayside, under a hedge; a low beggarly prostitute. | |
| JARKMEN | Those, who fabricate counterfeit passes, licences, and certificates for beggars. | |
| 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. | |
| MUMPERS | Originally beggars of the genteel kind, but since used for beggars in general. | |
| MUMPERS HALL | An alehouse where beggars are harboured. | |
| PALLIARDS | Those whose fathers were clapperdogens, or beggars born, and who themselves follow the same trade: the female sort beg with a number of children, borrowing them, if they have not a sufficient number of their own, and making them cry by pinching in order to excite charity; the males make artificial sores on different parts of their bodies, to move compassion. | |
| RATTLING MUMPERS | Beggars who ply coaches. | |
| RAWHEAD AND BLOODY BONES | A bull beggar, or scarechild, with which foolish nurses terrify crying brats. | |
| RENDEZVOUS | A place of meeting. The rendezvous of the beggars were, about the year 1638, according to the Bellman, St, Quinton's, the Three Crowns in the Vintry, St. Tybs, and at Knapsbury: there were four barns within a mile of London. In Middlesex were four other harbours, called Draw the Pudding out of the Fire, the Cross Keys in Craneford parish, St. Julian's in Isleworth parish, and the house of Pettie in Northall parish. In Kent, the King's Barn near Dartford, and Ketbrooke near Blackheath. | |
| RING | Money procured by begging: beggars so called it from its ringing when thrown to them. Also a circle formed for boxers, wrestlers, and cudgel-players, by a man styled Vinegar; who, with his hat before his eyes, goes round the circle, striking at random with his whip to prevent the populace from crowding in. | |
| SALMON or SALAMON | The beggars'sacrament or oath. | |
| SHIT SACK | A dastardly fellow: also a non-conformist. This appellation is said to have originated from the following story: - After the restoration, the laws against the non-conformists were extremely severe. They sometimes met in very obscure places: and there is a tradition that one of their congregations were assembled in a barn, the rendezvous of beggars and other vagrants, where the preacher, for want of a ladder or tub, was suspended in a sack fixed to the beam. His discourse that day being on the last judgment, he particularly attempted to describe the terrors of the wicked at the sounding of the trumpet, on which a trumpeter to a puppet-show, who had taken refuge in that barn, and lay hid under the straw, sounded a charge. The congregation, struck with the utmost consternation, fled in an instant from the place, leaving their affrighted teacher to shift for himself. The effects of his terror are said to have appeared at the bottom of the sack, and to have occasioned that opprobrious appellation by which the non-conformists were vulgarly distinguished. | |
| SKEW | A cup, or beggar's wooden dish. | |
| STOP HOLE ABBEY | The nick name of the chief rendzvous of the canting crew of beggars, gypsies, cheats, thieves, etc. etc. | |
| STROLLERS | Itinerants of different kinds. Strolling morts; beggars or pedlars pretending to be widows. | |
| STURDY BEGGARS | The fifth and last of the most ancient order of canters, beggars that rather demand than ask | |