Category: Books

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….

Mite

This is a new one to me, Grose defines this as “a nick name for a cheesemonger; from the small insect of that name found in cheese”. Horrible as it sounds, cheese mites are used deliberately in the development of some cheeses, although I’m not sure how controlled this process was during the eighteenth century. This term for a cheesemonger dates from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, but I suspect (with no evidence, just one of my random guesses) that it pre-dates this. I’m not sure that cheesemongers would have particularly liked the term though, it doesn’t really highlight their work.

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….

Mellow

And yet another one of Grose’s definitions about alcohol, following just after mauled, this one is defined as “almost drunk”. It might seem that this is a more recent way of defining being tipsy rather than drunk, but it dates back to the beginning of the seventeenth century and it has never fallen out of usage.

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….

Mauled

This is one of the definitions which sounds more modern, it’s “extremely drunk or soundly beaten”. I can imagine a group of lads in Wetherspoons saying that they’re mauled today, so sometimes word meanings can linger. The word ‘maul’ actually comes from the Latin word of ‘malleus’ meaning hammer and it’s fair to say that being hammered is now a common word for being very drunk.

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….

Master of the Rolls

I mentioned yesterday about how Grose doesn’t normally do much with puns, but he did with ‘Master of the Mint’. And there’s another here, “master of the rolls” meaning a baker. The phrase was first recorded with this meaning in the middle of the seventeenth century and fell out of usage in the late nineteenth century.

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….

Master of the Mint

There aren’t many puns in Grose’s dictionary, but this is one of them, defined as “a gardener”. Used from the late eighteenth to mid nineteenth century, it’s a play on words of the financial job within Government at the Royal Mint.

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….

Marriage Music

This definition by Grose is quite charming, it’s “the squalling and crying of children”. This beautiful phrase is first recorded as being used in the late seventeenth century and it lingered on until the later part of the nineteenth century. So, the next time I hear the children of friends crying, I will think of this….

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….

Marplot

This is quite a pithy definition from Grose, simply meaning “a spoil sport”. The word is literal, simply meaning someone who mars a plot, or who interferes in the arrangements of others. Something I must admit is quite annoying, but I digress…

The word was used much more commonly in the nineteenth century, but it’s rather faded away over the last few decades. This is another word I think I might try and use more though.

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….

Malkin or Maulkin

This is one of Grose’s longer definitions, which is “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”.

Another definition in this book, that of Grimalkin, is very similar, and these words are the origin of the name Matilda.

The word was used much more in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, generally fading away since, although it’s perhaps a more intriguing word than just saying ‘cat’.

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…. NB, it’s nice to reach number 200, although I’ve got a few days behind somewhere, as I should be on day 210 by now. I’ll catch up.

Mahometan Gruel

This slightly ridiculous phrase is defined by Grose as “coffee, because formerly used chiefly by the Turks”. I’d have thought it easier just to say coffee, a word which came into the English language in the sixteenth century via the Turkish word ‘kahveh’. The phrase was used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although I’m not entirely convinced that it was widely used as it appears only infrequently in print.