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.

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Entries releated to CLE

 

AMEN CURLER		A parish clerk.
ARTHUR, KING ARTHUR		A game used at sea, when near the line, or in a hot latitude. It is performed thus: A man who is to represent king Arthur, ridiculously dressed, having a large wig made out of oakum, or some old swabs, is seated on the side, or over a large vessel of water. Every person in his turn is to be ceremoniously introduced to him, and to pour a bucket of water over him, crying, hail, king Arthur! if during this ceremony the person introduced laughs or smiles (to which his majesty endeavours to excite him, by all sorts of ridiculous gesticulations), he changes place with, and then becomes, king Arthur, till relieved by some brother tar, who has as little command over his muscles as himself.
ARTICLE		A wench. A prime article. A handsome girl. She's a prime article (WHIP SLANG), she's a devilish good piece, a hell of a GOER.
ARTICLES		Breeches; coat, waistcoat, and articles.
AUTEM CACKLETUB		A conventicle or meeting-house for dissenters.
BALLOCKS		The testicles of a man or beast; also a vulgar nick name for a parson. His brains are in his ballocks, a cant saying to designate a fool.
BARNACLE		A good job, or snack easily got: also shellfish growing at the bottoms of ships; a bird of the goose kind; an instrument like a pair of pincers, to fix on the noses of vicious horses whilst shoeing; a nick name for spectacles, and also for the gratuity given to grooms by the buyers and sellers of horses.
BAWBELS, or BAWBLES		Trinkets; a man's testicles.
BEILBY'S BALL		He will dance at Beilby's ball, where the sheriff pays the music; he will be hanged. Who Mr. Beilby was, or why that ceremony was so called, remains with the quadrature of the circle, the discovery of the philosopher's stone, and divers other desiderata yet undiscovered.
BIENLY		Excellently. She wheedled so bienly; she coaxed or flattered so cleverly. French.
BINNACLE WORD		A fine or affected word, which sailors jeeringly offer to chalk up on the binnacle.
BOBBISH		Smart, clever, spruce.
BOOT CATCHER		The servant at an inn whose business it is to clean the boots of the guest.
BRAINS		If you had as much brains as guts, what a clever fellow you would be! a saying to a stupid fat fellow. To have some guts in his brains; to know something.
CARBUNCLE FACE		A red face, full of pimples.
CASE		A house; perhaps from the Italian CASA. In the canting lingo it meant store or ware house, as well as a dwelling house. Tout that case; mark or observe that house. It is all bob, now let's dub the gig of the case; now the coast is clear, let us break open the door of the house.
CAULIFLOWER		A large white wig, such as is commonly worn by the dignified clergy, and was formerly by physicians. Also the private parts of a woman; the reason for which appellation is given in the following story: A woman, who was giving evidence in a cause wherein it was necessary to express those parts, made use of the term cauliflower; for which the judge on the bench, a peevish old fellow, reproved her, saying she might as well call it artichoke. Not so, my lord, replied she; for an artichoke has a bottom, but a cunt and a cauliflower have none.
CHOP CHURCHES		Simoniacal dealers in livings, or other ecclesiastical preferments.
CHUCK FARTHING		A parish clerk.
CLE		A parish clerk.
CLEAN		Expert; clever. Amongst the knuckling coves he is reckoned very clean; he is considered very expert as a pickpocket.
CLEAR		Very drunk. The cull is clear, let's bite him; the fellow is very drunk, let's cheat him.
CLEAVER		One that will cleave; used of a forward or wanton woman.
CLERKED		Soothed, funned, imposed on. The cull will not be clerked; i.e. the fellow will not be imposed on by fair words.
CLEYMES		Artificial sores, made by beggars to excite charity.
CLOVEN, CLEAVE, or CLEFT		A term used for a woman who passes for a maid, but is not one.
CLUTCH THE FIST		To clench or shut the hand. Clutch fisted; covetous, stingy. See CLOSE-FISTED.
COAX		To fondle, or wheedle. To coax a pair of stockings; to pull down the part soiled into the shoes, so as to give a dirty pair of stockings the appearance of clean ones. Coaxing is also used, instead of darning, to hide the holes about the ancles.
COBBLERS PUNCH		Treacle, vinegar, gin, and water.
CRACKSMAN		A house-breaker. The kiddy is a clever cracksman; the young fellow is a very expert house-breaker.
CROW FAIR		A visitation of the clergy. See REVIEW OF THE BLACK CUIRASSIERS.
DAMNED SOUL		A clerk in a counting house, whose sole business it is to clear or swear off merchandise at the custom-house; and who, it is said, guards against the crime of perjury, by taking a previous oath, never to swear truly on those occasions.
DANDY		That's the dandy; i.e. the ton, the clever thing; an expression of similar import to "That's the barber." See BARBER.
DEATH HUNTER		An undertaker, one who furnishes the necessary articles for funerals. See CARRION HUNTER.
DILLY		An abbreviation of the word DILIGENCE. A public voiture or stage, commonly a post chaise, carrying three persons; the name is taken from the public stage vehicles in France and Flanders. The dillies first began to run in England about the year 1779.
DIP		A cook's shop, under Furnival's Inn, where many attornies clerks, and other inferior limbs of the law, take out the wrinkles from their bellies. DIP is also a punning name for a tallow-chandler.
DOLLY		A Yorkshire dolly; a contrivance for washing, by means of a kind of wheel fixed in a tub, which being turned about, agitates and cleanses the linen put into it, with soap and water.
DROP COVES		Persons who practice the fraud of dropping a ring or other article, and picking it up before the person intended to be defrauded, they pretend that the thing is very valuable to induce their gull to lend them money, or to purchase the article. See FAWNY RIG, and MONEY DROPPERS.
DUFFERS		Cheats who ply in different parts of the town, particularly about Water-lane, opposite St. Clement's church, in the Strand, and pretend to deal in smuggled goods, stopping all country people, or such as they think they can impose on; which they frequently do, by selling them Spital-fields goods at double their current price.
EXPENDED		Killed: alluding to the gunner's accounts, wherein the articles consumed are charged under the title of expended. Sea phrase.
GINGERBREAD		A cake made of treacle, flour, and grated ginger; also money. He has the gingerbread; he is rich.
GLASS EYES		A nick name for one wearing spectacles.
GRINAGOG, THE CAT'S UNCLE		A foolish grinning fellow, one who grins without reason.
GROG-BLOSSOM		A carbuncle, or pimple in the face, caused by drinking.
GUMMY		Clumsy: particularly applied to the ancles of men or women, and the legs of horses.
GUTTING A QUART POT		Taking out the lining of it: ie: drinking it off. Gutting an oyster; eating it. Gutting a house; clearing it of its furniture. See POULTERER.
HOCKS		vulgar appellation for the feet. You have left the marks of your dirty hocks on my clean stairs; a frequent complaint from a mop squeezer to a footman.
JACK ADAMS		A fool. Jack Adams's parish; Clerkenwell.
JAPANNED		Ordained. To be japanned; to enter into holy orders, to become a clergyman, to put on the black cloth: from the colour of the japan ware, which is black.
JEW		An over-reaching dealer, or hard, sharp fellow; an extortioner: the brokers formerly behind St. Clement's church in the Strand were called Jews by their brethren the taylors.
KATE		A picklock. 'Tis a rum kate; it is a clever picklock.
LITTLE CLERGYMAN		A young chimney-sweeper.
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.
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.
LUMP		To beat; also to include a number of articles under one head.
MALKIN, or MAULKIN		A general name for a cat; also a parcel of rags fastened to the end of a stick, to clean an oven; also a figure set up in a garden to scare the birds; likewise an awkward woman. The cove's so scaly, he'd spice a malkin of his jazey: the fellow is so mean, that he would rob a scare-crow of his old wig.
MALMSEY NOSE		A red pimpled snout, rich in carbuncles and rubies.
MARROWBONES		The knees. To bring any one down on his marrow bones; to make him beg pardon on his knees: some derive this from Mary's bones, i.e. the bones bent in honour of the Virgin Mary; but this seems rather far- fetched. Marrow bones and cleavers; principal instruments in the band of rough music: these are generally performed on by butchers, on marriages, elections, riding skimmington, and other public or joyous occasions.
MINE UNCLE'S		A pawnbroker's shop; also a necessary house. Carried to my uncle's; pawned. New-married men are also said to go to their uncle's, when they leave their wives soon after the honey moon.
MINOR CLERGY		Young chimney sweepers.
MUD LARK		A fellow who goes about by the water side picking up coals, nails, or other articles in the mud. Also a duck.
MUNDUNGUS		Bad or rank tobacco: from mondongo, a Spanish word signifying tripes, or the uncleaned entrails of a beast, full of filth.
NASK, or NASKIN		A prison or bridewell. The new nask; Clerkenwell bridewell. Tothil-fields nask; the bridewell at Tothil-fields.
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.
NEW DROP		The scaffold used at Newgate for hanging of criminals; which dropping down, leaves them suspended. By this improvement, the use of that vulgar vehicle, a cart, is entirely left off.
NIP CHEESE		A nick name for the purser of a ship: from those gentlemen being supposed sometimes to nip, or diminish, the allowance of the seamen, in that and every other article. It is also applied to stingy persons in general.
NUTMEGS		Testicles.
PINCH		To go into a tradesman's shop under the pretence of purchasing rings or other light articles, and while examining them to shift some up the sleeve of the coat. Also to ask for change for a guinea, and when the silver is received, to change some of the good shillings for bad ones; then suddenly pretending to recollect that you had sufficient silver to pay the bill, ask for the guinea again, and return the change, by which means several bad shillings are passed.
POMMEL		To beat: originally confined to beating with the hilt of a sword, the knob being, from its similarity to a small apple, called pomelle; in Spanish it is still called the apple of the sword. As the clenched fist likewise somewhat resembles an apple, perhaps that might occasion the term pommelling to be applied to fisty-cuffs.
PRIME		Bang up. Quite the thing. Excellent. Well done. She's a prime piece; she is very skilful in the venereal act. Prime post. She's a prime article.
QUANDARY		To be in a quandary: to be puzzled. Also one so over-gorged, as to be doubtful which he should do first, sh - e or spew. Some derive the term quandary from the French phrase qu'en dirai je? what shall I say of it? others from an Italian word signifying a conjuror's circle.
QUILL DRIVER		A clerk, scribe, or hackney writer.
RASCAL		A rogue or villain: a term borrowed from the chase; a rascal originally meaning a lean shabby deer, at the time of changing his horns, penis, etc. whence, in the vulgar acceptation, rascal is conceived to signify a man without genitals: the regular vulgar answer to this reproach, if uttered by a woman, is the offer of an ocular demonstration of the virility of the party so defamed. Some derive it from RASCAGLIONE, an Italian word signifying a man. without testicles, or an eunuch.
REVIEW OF THE BLACK CUIRASSIERS		A visitation of the clergy. See CROW FAIR.
RIDING SKIMMINGTON		A ludicrous cavalcade, in ridicule of a man beaten by his wife. It consists of a man riding behind a woman, with his face to the horse's tail, holding a distaff in his hand, at which he seems to work, the woman all the while beating him with a ladle; a smock displayed on a staff is carried before them as an emblematical standard, denoting female superiority: they are accompanied by what is called the ROUGH MUSIC, that is, frying-pans, bulls horns, marrow-bones and cleavers, etc. A procession of this kind is admirably described by Butler in his Hudibras. He rode private, i.e. was a private trooper.
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.
ROUGH MUSIC		Saucepans, frying-paps, poker and tongs, marrow-bones and cleavers, bulls horns, etc. beaten upon and sounded in ludicrous processions.
ROUND ROBIN		A mode of signing remonstrances practised by sailors on board the king's ships, wherein their names are written in a circle, so that it cannot be discovered who first signed it, or was, in other words, the ringleader.
RUM BITE		A clever cheat, a clean trick.
RUM COVE		A dexterous or clever rogue.
SADDLE		To saddle the spit; to give a dinner or supper. To saddle one's nose; to wear spectacles. To saddle a place or pension; to oblige the holder to pay a certain portion of his income to some one nominated by the donor. Saddle sick: galled with riding, having lost leather.
SLOP SELLER		A dealer in those articles, who keeps a slop shop.
SMALL CLOTHES		Breeches: a gird at the affected delicacy of the present age; a suit being called coat, waistcoat, and articles, or small clothes.
SMUG LAY		Persons who pretend to be smugglers of lace and valuable articles; these men borrow money of publicans by depositing these goods in their hands; they shortly decamp, and the publican discovers too late that he has been duped; and on opening the pretended treasure, he finds trifling articles of no value.
SOLFA		A parish clerk.
STAR LAG		Breaking shop-windows, and stealing some article thereout.
STAYTAPE		A taylor; from that article, and its coadjutor buckram, which make no small figure in the bills of those knights of the needle.
SWABBERS		The ace of hearts, knave of clubs, ace and duce of trumps, at whist: also the lubberly seamen, put to swab, and clean the ship.
SWEET		Easy to be imposed on, or taken in; also expert, dexterous clever. Sweet's your hand; said of one dexterous at stealing.
TALLYWAGS, or TARRYWAGS		A man's testicles.
TAYLE DRAWERS		Thieves who snatch gentlemens swords from their sides. He drew the cull's tayle rumly; he snatched away the gentleman's sword cleverly.
THINGUMBOB		Mr. Thingumbob; a vulgar address or nomination to any person whose name is unknown, the same as Mr. What-d'ye-cal'em. Thingumbobs; testicles.
THREE-LEGGED MARE, or STOOL		The gallows, formerly consisting of three posts, over which were laid three transverse beams. This clumsy machine has lately given place to an elegant contrivance, called the NEW DROP, by which the use of that vulgar vehicle a cart, or mechanical instrument a ladder, is also avoided; the patients being left suspended by the dropping down of that part of the floor on which they stand. This invention was first made use of for a peer. See DROP.
TOUTING		(From TUERI, to look about) Publicans fore-stalling guests, or meeting them on the road, and begging their custom; also thieves or smugglers looking out to see that the coast is clear. Touting ken; the bar of a public house.
TRADESMEN		Thieves. Clever tradesmen; good thieves.
TURNPIKE MAN		A parson; because the clergy collect their tolls at our entrance into and exit from the world.
TWIDDLE-DIDDLES		Testicles.
UNCLE		Mine uncle's; a necessary house. He is gone to visit his uncle; saying of one who leaves his wife soon after marriage. It likewise means a pawnbroker's: goods pawned are frequently said to be at mine uncle's, or laid up in lavender.
VINEGAR		A name given to the person who with a whip in his hand, and a hat held before his eye, keeps the ring clear, at boxing-matches and cudgel-playing; also, in cant terms, a cloak.
WHIRLYGIGS		Testicles.