Author: admin

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….

Loll

This is a more upbeat (he often talks about all manner of negative and offensive terms) definition from Grose which is “mother’s loll; a favourite child, the mother’s darling”. I have no idea why the word would come to mean this, it’s from the word ‘lollen’, or to act in a lazy manner. I would have said that this has fallen out of usage, but I have heard children being referred to in this manner, so somehow this word has lingered on….

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….

Lobscouse

This word is defined by Grose as “a dish much eaten at sea, composed of salt beef, biscuit and onion, well peppered, and stewed together”. It has a greater importance though in etymological terms because it became a word used to describe those who ate this lamb or beef stew, who were mainly sailors. The shortened version of the word, which is ‘scouse’ became used to describe the workers at the docks in Liverpool and later became used as a nickname for all Liverpudlians.

And the evolution of the two words over time.

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….

Little Ease

Grose defines this as “a small dark cell in Guildhall, London, where disorderly apprentices are confined by the city chamberlain. It is called Little Ease from its being so low that a lad cannot stand upright in it”. Today, the phrase is perhaps better known for a similar room located underneath the White Tower in the Tower of London, although there’s not a great deal of evidence to show that it was used to hold prisoners.

Walter Thornbury wrote in 1878 about the cells at the Guildhall:

“On brackets to the right and left of the balcony were the gigantic figures of Gog and Magog, as before-mentioned, giving, by their vast size and singular costume, an unique character to the whole. At the sides of the steps, under the hall-keeper’s office, were two dark cells, or cages, in which unruly apprentices were occasionally confined, by order of the City Chamberlain; these were called ‘Little Ease,’ from not being of sufficient height for a big boy to stand upright in them.”

It doesn’t sound ideal….

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….

Lingo

I had thought (and this is another thing that I haven’t really given much thought to) that this was a newer word than it is, with Grose defining it as “language, an outlandish lingo; a foreign tongue. The parlezvous lingo; the French language”. The word actually seems to date from around 1700, probably from the Portuguese word ‘lingoa’ or the French ‘lingua’.

The word has remained in relatively constant usage over the last two centuries, with an upturn over the last few decades.