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 BENE

 

BENE		Good - BENAR. Better.
BENE BOWSE		Good beer, or other strong liquor.
BENE COVE		A good fellow.
BENE DARKMANS		Goodnight.
BENE FEAKERS OF GYBES		Counterfeiters of passes.
BENE FEARERS		Counterfeiters of bills.
BENESHIPLY		Worshipfully.
BLACK STRAP		Bene Carlo wine; also port. A task of labour imposed on soldiers at Gibraltar, as a punishment for small offences.
CHELSEA		A village near London, famous for the military hospital. To get Chelsea; to obtain the benefit of that hospital. Dead Chelsea, by God! an exclamation uttered by a grenadier at Fontenoy, on having his leg carried away by a cannon-ball.
CUT BENE		To speak gently. To cut bene whiddes; to give good words. To cut queer whiddes; to give foul language. To cut a bosh, or a flash; to make a figure.
HEDGE PRIEST		An illiterate unbeneficed curate, a patrico.
LOO		For the good of the loo; for the benefit of the company or community.
NECK VERSE		Formerly the persons claiming the benefit of clergy were obliged to read a verse in a Latin manuscript psalter: this saving them from the gallows, was termed their neck verse: it was the first verse of the fiftyfirst psalm, Miserere mei,etc.
PIT		To lay pit and boxes into one; an operation in midwifery or copulation, whereby the division between the anus and vagina is cut through, broken, and demolished: a simile borrowed from the playhouse, when, for the benefit of some favourite player, the pit and boxes are laid together. The pit is also the hole under the gallows, where poor rogues unable to pay the fees are buried.
UNGRATEFUL MAN		A parson, who at least once a week abuses his best benefactor, i.e. the devil.
WHITEWASHED		One who has taken the benefit of an act of insolvency, to defraud his creditors, is said to have been whitewashed.