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….
Light House
This is another one of Grose’s definitions that I don’t feel the need to add to, but I’ve included it here as I like it. His definition is simply “a man with a red fiery nose”.
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….
Letch
This is a word that Grose was one of the first to define and he noted it to be “a whim of the amorous kind, out of the common way”. The origins of the word are unknown, but it might be a slight corruption of the word ‘latch’, which is from the Old English ‘læccan’, which is to grasp or take hold of.
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….
Lazybones
I’m not quite sure where Grose got this definition from, as it differs from other accounts on how lazybones evolved, which remains a commonly used word today to describe someone as lazy. He defined it as “an instrument like a pair of tongs, for old or very fat people to take any thing from the ground without stooping”. I prefer his definition though, ‘tongs for very fat people’ to that presented in etymological dictionaries, which just says that it evolved from the word ‘lazy’ being added to ‘bones’, to represent a person.
It’s one of the few words in the dictionary which is much more in use today than it was when Grose published his book.
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….
Laystall
As usual, Grose uses his careful prose here, defining this word as “a dunghill about London, on which the soil brought from necessary houses is emptied; or, in more technical terms, where the old gold collected at weddings by the Tom t**d man, is stored”. The striking out of part of one word is Grose, not me, always dignified…..
The word ‘laystall’ originally meant the area where cattle were held before they went to market, but it evolved into meaning any old dunghill. When cities were reconfigured, such as London after the Great Fire in 1666, there was a desire to try and put these as far away from residents as was possible. This wasn’t always particularly achievable though and I can imagine the disappointment if the city authorities decided to shove one next to where you lived.
There are a few streets across the country which retain this name, a rather lovely record of something which wouldn’t have been particularly lovely at the time. One example of this is in London, where Laystall Street is located off of the Clerkenwell Road in the Holborn area.
Never really a word that would be dropped into casual conversation or writing, but it fell nearly entirely out of usage in the twentieth 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….
Lawful Blanket
Unfortunately, this is another term that I have nothing useful to add to Grose’s definition, which is simply “a wife”. I’m not sure that this is the most suitable term for a man to use to describe his wife, but no doubt it was seen to be more acceptable at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The phrase is listed in numerous locations relating to etymology, but none of them has any clue where it comes from…… I can’t see it coming back into the English language either.
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….
Launch
This is another one of the definitions that Grose uses that I can’t add much to, but I very much like the terminology again. He defines the word as “the delivery, or labour, of a pregnant woman; a crying out of groaning”. There’s something rather lovely about calling the birth of a baby as its “launch”.
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….
Latitat
This word is defined by Grose as “a nick-name for an attorney; from the name of a writ”. The word comes from the Latin which means “he lies hidden” or “he lurks” and it was a writ that was issued with the assumption that the person it was directed at was in hiding. This legal device wouldn’t be used now, as a court would subpoena anyone who needed to attend proceedings. I’m not sure why the word became used to describe an attorney, but it mainly seems to be Grose putting this theory forwards. As an aside, it’s a rather lovely word.
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….
Land Lopers or Land Lubbers
There appears to have been something of a change in the meaning of Land Lubbers (or Landlubbers) since Grose wrote his dictionary. He defined these terms as “vagabonds lurking about the country who subsist by pilfering”. The word comes from the Dutch ‘landloper’, or land-runner and this evolved into meaning a vagrant. But, there’s a separate evolution of the term here as ‘lubber’ meant a foolish person in Middle English, which then became known as a term for a seaman, without the word ‘land’ before it. Gradually though, the two terms merged in meaning and now the common word is ‘landlubber’.
Land lopers wasn’t common enough to appear in Google Ngram, but this shows how the usage of “land lubber” and “landlubber” has changed over the last two centuries.
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….
Lamb’s Wool
Grose is back to his alcoholic recipes again with this definition, which he noted was “apples roasted and put into strong ale”. The phrase first appeared in writing in the sixteenth century, although this was something likely done for many centuries before that.
The origins of the word aren’t known, although some speculate that it’s from ‘La Maes Abhal’, from the festival of the Day of the Apple Fruit. I suspect it’s just named after the appearance of the drink, which had a frothy top, given that whole eggs were often added and whipped in with the drink. Actually, I’m not sure what the eggs were doing in this drink, just the apples put in strong ale seems enough to me, but there we go….
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….
Knock Me Down
There’s not much that I can add to this, but it’s a bit of social history recorded by Grose, being defined as “strong ale or beer, stingo”. I’ve had imperial stouts that should be called this….. A stingo is a strong ale, a word not really used much at all now, although Sam Smiths have a beer called stingo. The phrase was used in the middle of the eighteenth century and more commonly in the nineteenth century, before being mostly lost in the twentieth century. There is though one brewery, Zerodegrees in London, who still have a porter with this name.
