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 NIG

 

AFFIDAVIT MEN		Knights of the post, or false witnesses, said to attend Westminster Hall, and other courts of justice, ready to swear any thing for hire.
BATCH		We had a pretty batch of it last night; we had a hearty dose of liquor. Batch originally means the whole quantity of bread baked at one time in an oven.
BENE DARKMANS		Goodnight.
BING		To go. Bing avast; get you gone. Binged avast in a darkmans; stole away in the night. Bing we to Rumeville: shall we go to London?
BLINDMAN'S HOLIDAY		Night, darkness.
BULKER		One who lodges all night on a bulk or projection before old-fashioned shop windows.
CATERWAULING		Going out in the night in search of intrigues, like a cat in the gutters.
CHALKERS		Men of wit, in Ireland, who in the night amuse themselves with cutting inoffensive passengers across the face with a knife. They are somewhat like those facetious gentlemen some time ago known in England by the title of Sweaters and Mohocks.
CONUNDRUMS		Enigmatical conceits.
CROOK SHANKS		A nickname for a man with bandy legs. He buys his boots in Crooked Lane, and his stockings in Bandy-legged Walk; his legs grew in the night, therefore could not see to grow straight; jeering sayings of men with crooked legs.
DARK CULLY		A married man that keeps a mistress, whom he visits only at night, for fear of discovery.
DARKMAN'S BUDGE		One that slides into a house in the dark of the evening, and hides himself, in order to let some of the gang in at night to rob it.
DARKMANS		The night.
DOBIN RIG		Stealing ribbands from haberdashers early in the morning or late at night; generally practised by women in the disguise of maid servants.
DOCK		To lie with a woman. The cull docked the dell all the darkmans; the fellow laid with the wench all night. Docked smack smooth; one who has suffered an amputation of his penis from a venereal complaint. He must go into dock; a sea phrase, signifying that the person spoken of must undergo a salivation. Docking is also a punishment inflicted by sailors on the prostitutes who have infected them with the venereal disease; it consists in cutting off all their clothes, petticoats, shift and all, close to their stays, and then turning them into the street.
DOG		An old dog at it; expert or accustomed to any thing. Dog in a manger; one who would prevent another from enjoying what he himself does not want: an allusion to the well-known fable. The dogs have not dined; a common saying to any one whose shirt hangs out behind. To dog, or dodge; to follow at a distance. To blush like a blue dog, i.e. not at all. To walk the black dog on any one; a punishment inflicted in the night on a fresh prisoner, by his comrades, in case of his refusal to pay the usual footing or garnish.
FLY-BY-NIGHT		You old fly-by-night; an ancient term of reproach to an old woman, signifying that she was a witch, and alluding to the nocturnal excursions attributed to witches, who were supposed to fly abroad to their meetings, mounted on brooms.
GOLD FINDER		One whose employment is to empty necessary houses; called also a tom-turd-man, and night-man: the latter, from that business being always performed in the night.
HOLIDAY		A holiday bowler; a bad bowler. Blind man's holiday; darkness, night. A holiday is any part of a ship's bottom, left uncovered in paying it. SEA TERM. It is all holiday; See ALL HOLIDAY.
JIBBER THE KIBBER		A method of deceiving seamen, by fixing a candle and lanthorn round the neck of a horse, one of whose fore feet is tied up; this at night has the appearance of a ship's light. Ships bearing towards it, run on shore, and being wrecked, are plundered by the inhabitants. This diabolical device is, it is said, practised by the inhabitants of our western coasts.
KEEP IT UP		To prolong a debauch. We kept it up finely last night; metaphor drawn from the game of shuttle- cock.
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.
KNIGHT AND BARROW PIG		More hog than gentleman. A saying of any low pretender to precedency.
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 TRENCHER		A great eater.
KNIGHT OF THE WHIP		A coachman.
MOTHER, or THE MOTHER		A bawd. Mother abbess: the same. Mother midnight; a midwife. Mother in law's bit; a small piece, mothers in law being supposed not apt to overload the stomachs of their husband's children.
MUSHROOM		A person or family suddenly raised to riches and eminence: an allusion to that fungus, which starts up in a night.
NIG		The clippings of money. Nigging; clipping. Nigler, a clipper.
NIGGLING		Cutting awkwardly, trifling; also accompanying with a woman.
NIGHT MAGISTRATE		A constable.
NIGHTINGALE		A soldier who, as the term is, sings out at the halberts. It is a point of honour in some regiments, among the grenadiers, never to cry out, become nightingales, whilst under the discipline of the cat of nine tails; to avoid which, they chew a bullet.
NIGHTMAN		One whose business it is to empty necessary houses in London, which is always done in the night; the operation is called a wedding. See WEDDING.
NIGMENOG		A very silly fellow.
POST NOINTER		A house painter, who occasionally paints or anoints posts. Knight of the post; a false evidence, one ready to swear any thing for hire. From post to pillar; backwards and forwards.
QUEER ROOSTER		An informer that pretends to be sleeping, and thereby overhears the conversation of thieves in night cellars.
RAINBOW		Knight of the rainbow; a footman: from being commonly clothed in garments of different colours. A meeting of gentlemen, styled of the most ancient order of the rainbow, was advertised to be held at the Foppington's Head, Moorfields.
ROUGH		To lie rough; to lie all night in one's clothes: called also roughing it. Likewise to sleep on the bare deck of a ship, when the person is commonly advised to chuse the softest plank.
ROWLAND		To give a Rowland for an Oliver; to give an equivalent. Rowland and Oliver were two knights famous in romance: the wonderful achievements of the one could only be equalled by those of the other.
SHERIFF'S BALL		An execution. To dance at the sheriff's ball, and loll out one's tongue at the company; to be hanged, or go to rest in a horse's night-cap, i.e. a halter.
SLAP-BANG SHOP		A petty cook's shop, where there is no credit given, but what is had must be paid DOWN WITH THE READY SLAP-BANG, i.e. immediately. This is a common appellation for a night cellar frequented by thieves, and sometimes for a stage coach or caravan.
SNICKER, or SNIGGER		To laugh privately, or in one's sleeve.
STAYTAPE		A taylor; from that article, and its coadjutor buckram, which make no small figure in the bills of those knights of the needle.
STINGRUM		A niggard.
SWEATING		A mode of diminishing the gold coin, practiced chiefly by the Jews, who corrode it with aqua regia. Sweating was also a diversion practised by the bloods of the last century, who styled themselves Mohocks: these gentlemen lay in wait to surprise some person late in the night, when surrouding him, they with their swords pricked him in the posteriors, which obliged him to be constantly turning round; this they continued till they thought him sufficiently sweated.
THOMOND		Like Lord Thomond's cocks, all on one side. Lord Thomond's cock-feeder, an Irishman, being entrusted with some cocks which were matched for a considerable sum, the night before the battle shut them all together in one room, concluding that as they were all on the same side, they would not disagree: the consequence was, they were most of them either killed or lamed before the morning.
TOM TURDMAN		A night man, one who empties necessary houses.
UPRIGHT MAN		An upright man signifies the chief or principal of a crew. The vilest, stoutest rogue in the pack is generally chosen to this post, and has the sole right to the first night's lodging with the dells, who afterwards are used in common among the whole fraternity. He carries a short truncheon in his hand, which he calls his filchman, and has a larger share than ordinary in whatsoever is gotten in the society. He often travels in company with thirty or forty males and females, abram men, and others, over whom he presides arbitrarily. Sometimes the women and children who are unable to travel, or fatigued, are by turns carried in panniers by an ass, or two, or by some poor jades procured for that purpose.
WAITS		Musicians of the lower order, who in most towns play under the windows of the chief inhabitants at midnight, a short time before Christmas, for which they collect a christmas-box from house to house. They are said to derive their name of waits from being always in waiting to celebrate weddings and other joyous events happening within their district.
WHIT		Whittington's Newgate. - Five rum-padders are rubbed in the darkmans out of the whit, and are piked into the deuseaville; five highwaymen broke out of Newgate in the night, and are gone into the country.