Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 198

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the current health crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored….

Lush

Another short and sweet definition from Grose, this means “strong beer”. The word has a wider meaning as well, Grose mentioned separately that ‘lushey’ means drunk and ‘to lush’ is to drink.

There are a few word origin meanings, but my favourite is that it’s from ‘licious’, an alternative spelling of the word delicious, therefore strong beer is delicious. It’s probably though a corruption of the word ‘lush’ which had a different etymological route and means soft or luxuriant.