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  

 

Entries releated to PIT

 

AMUSERS		Rogues who carried snuff or dust in their pockets, which they threw into the eyes of any person they intended to rob; and running away, their accomplices (pretending to assist and pity the half-blinded person) took that opportunity of plundering him.
BAGGAGE		Heavy baggage; women and children. Also a familiar epithet for a woman; as, cunning baggage, wanton baggage, etc.
BASKET		An exclamation frequently made use of in cock-pits, at cock-fightings, where persons refusing or unable to pay their losings, are adjudged by that respectable assembly to be put into a basket suspended over the pit, there to remain during that day's diversion: on the least demur to pay a bet, Basket is vociferated in terrorem. He grins like a basket of chips: a saying of one who is on the broad grin.
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.
BLACKLEGS		A gambler or sharper on the turf or in the cockpit: so called, perhaps, from their appearing generally in boots; or else from game-cocks whose legs are always black.
BOTTOMLESS PIT		The monosyllable.
CALVES HEAD CLUB		A club instituted by the Independents and Presbyterians, to commemorate the decapitation of King Charles I. Their chief fare was calves heads; and they drank their wine and ale out of calves skulls.
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.
CLACK-LOFT		A pulpit, so called by orator Henley.
CRIBBAGE-FACED		Marked with the small pox, the pits bearing a kind of resemblance to the holes in a cribbage-board.
CROPPING DRUMS		Drummers of the foot guards, or Chelsea hospital, who find out weddings, and beat a point of war to serenade the new married couple, and thereby obtain money.
DEVILISH		Very: an epithet which in the English vulgar language is made to agree with every quality or thing; as, devilish bad, devilish good; devilish sick, devilish well; devilish sweet, devilish sour; devilish hot, devilish cold, etc. etc.
DRAM		A glass or small measure of any spirituous liquors, which, being originally sold by apothecaries, were estimated by drams, ounces, etc. Dog's dram; to spit in his mouth, and clap his back.
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.
DUNGHILL		A coward: a cockpit phrase, all but gamecocks being styled dunghills. To die dunghill; to repent, or shew any signs of contrition at the gallows. Moving dunghill; a dirty, filthy man or woman. Dung, an abbreviation of dunghill, also means a journeyman taylor who submits to the law for regulating journeymen taylors' wages, therefore deemed by the flints a coward. See FLINTS.
FINGER IN EYE		To put finger in eye; to weep: commonly applied to women. The more you cry the less you'll p-ss; a consolatory speech used by sailors to their doxies. It is as great a pity to see a woman cry, as to see a goose walk barefoot; another of the same kind.
FRATERS		Vagabonds who beg with sham patents, or briefs, for hospitals, fires, inundations, etc.
FROSTY FACE		One pitted with the small pox.
GAMON		To humbug. To deceive, To tell lies. What rum gamon the old file pitched to the flat; how finely the knowing old fellow humbugged the fool.
GINGER-PATED, or GINGER-HACKLED		Red haired: a term borrowed from the cockpit, where red cocks are called gingers,
GOTCH-GUTTED		Pot bellied: a gotch in Norfolk signifying a pitcher, or large round jug.
GREENWICH BARBERS		Retailers of sand from the pits at and about Greenwich, in Kent: perhaps they are styled barbers, from their constant shaving the sandbanks.
GREENWICH GOOSE		A pensioner of Greenwich Hospital.
HASTY		Precipitate, passionate. He is none of the Hastings sort; a saying of a slow, loitering fellow: an allusion to the Hastings pea, which is the first in season.
HAWKERS		Licensed itinerant retailers of different commodities, called also pedlars; likewise the sellers of news-papers. Hawking; an effort to spit up the thick phlegm, called OYSTERS: whence it is wit upon record, to ask the person so doing whether he has a licence; a punning allusion to the Act of hawkers and pedlars.
HOBNAIL		A country clodhopper: from the shoes of country farmers and ploughmen being commonly stuck full of hob-nails, and even often clouted, or tipped with iron. The Devil ran over his face with hobnails in his shoes; said of one pitted With the small pox.
HOPPING GILES		A jeering appellation given to any person who limps, or is lame; St. Giles was the patron of cripples, lepers, etc. Churches dedicated to that saint commonly stand out of town, many of them having been chapels to hospitals. See GYLES.
HUM BOX		A pulpit.
JOB'S DOCK		He is laid up in Job's dock; i.e. in a salivation. The apartments for the foul or venereal patients in St. Bartholomew's hospital, are called Job's ward.
JORUM		A jugg, or large pitcher.
KITTLE PITCHERING		A jocular method of hobbling or bothering a troublesome teller of long stories: this is done by contradicting some very immaterial circumstance at the beginning of the narration, the objections to which being settled, others are immediately started to some new particular of like consequence; thus impeding, or rather not suffering him to enter into, the main story. Kittle pitchering is often practised in confederacy, one relieving the other, by which the design is rendered less obvious.
LICKSPITTLE		A parasite, or talebearer.
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 HOSPITAL		An hospital for venereal patients.
MAIDEN SESSIONS		A sessions where none of the prisoners are capitally convicted.
OYSTER		A gob of thick phlegm, spit by a consumptive man.
PANTILE SHOP		A presbyterian, or other dissenting meeting house, frequently covered with pantiles: called also a cock-pit.
PARSON PALMER		A jocular name, or term of reproach, to one who stops the circulation of the glass by preaching over his liquor; as it is said was done by a parson of that name whose cellar was under his pulpit.
PASS BANK		The place for playing at passage, cut into the ground almost like a cock-pit. Also the stock or fund.
PAY		To smear over. To pay the bottom of a ship or boat; to smear it over with pitch: The devil to pay, and no pitch hot or ready. SEA TERM. - Also to beat: as, I will pay you as Paul paid the Ephesians, over the face and eyes, and all your d - -d jaws. To pay away; to fight manfully, also to eat voraciously. To pay through the nose: to pay an extravagant price.
PIT		A watch fob. He drew a rare thimble from the swell's pit. He took a handsome watch from the gentleman's fob.
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.
PIT-A-PAT		The palpitation of the heart: as, my heart went pit-a-pat. Pintledy-pantledy; the same.
PITCH-KETTLED		Stuck fast, confounded.
PITCHER		The miraculous pitcher, that holds water with the mouth downwards: a woman's commodity. She has crack'd her pitcher or pipkin; she has lost her maidenhead.
PITT'S PICTURE		A window stopt up on the inside, to save the tax imposed in that gentleman's administration. PARTY WIT
PRATTLING BOX		The pulpit.
ROYAL STAG SOCIETY		Was held every Monday evening, at seven o'clock, at the Three tuns, near the Hospital Gate, Newgate-street.
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.
SHAG-BAG, or SHAKE-BAG		A poor sneaking fellow; a man of no spirit: a term borrowed from the cock-pit.
SLAMKIN		A female sloven, one whose clothes seem hung on with a pitch-fork, a careless trapes.
SPIT		A sword.
SPIT		He is as like his father as if he was spit out of his mouth; said of a child much resembling his father.
SPIT FIRE		A violent, pettish, or passionate person.
STUB-FACED		Pitted with the smallpox: the devil ran over his face with horse stabs (horse nails) in his shoes.
TICKLE PITCKEB		A thirsty fellow, a sot.
TROT		An old trot; a decrepit old woman. A dog trot; a gentle pace.
WASPISH		Peevish, spiteful.
WOOD		In a wood; bewildered, in a maze, in a peck of troubles, puzzled, or at a loss what course to take in any business. To look over the wood; to ascend the pulpit, to preach: I shall look over the wood at St. James's on Sunday next. To look through the wood; to stand in the pillory. Up to the arms in wood; in the pillory.