Tag: Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

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.

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….

Knight and Barrow Pig

This is another beautiful phrase, defined by Grose as “more hog than gentleman. A saying of any low pretender to precedence”. A barrow pig is one which has been castrated and so the meaning of the phrase becomes quite self-evident, but it’s perhaps unfortunate that it didn’t seem to be widely used and it’s really only through Grose that it has been recorded. It would be quite a sophisticated insult to use today 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….

Knight of the Post

This is defined by Grose as “a false evidence, one that is ready to swear any thing for hire”. So, effectively, someone who is willing to perjure themselves for money, which isn’t an ideal state of affairs for the judicial system. The phrase dates back to the late sixteenth century, although had fallen out of usage by the middle of the nineteenth century. In England and Wales, perjury only became an offence in common law in 1613, following a series of rather unfortunate cases.

Back in the Tudor and Stuart periods, and indeed later, it was possible to find people around the Inns of Court and Westminster Hall who were willing to lie and produce false documents for a suitable fee. The origins of the term are unknown, but it’s thought it likely relates to where the individual would stand, by a certain post where legal announcements were placed, waiting for their next commission.

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….

Kissing Crust

Sometimes Grose gets a bit obsessed with murder, crime and fornication, but with this definition it’s more playful, it’s “the part where the loaves have touched the oven”. There’s some debate, and there are probably more important things to talk about, about whether this is correct, as others have defined it as “the part where the loaves have touched each other”. This sort of makes a difference, at in Grose’s definition it would be a hard bit of bread, whereas with the second definition, it would be a soft piece of the bread.

I don’t think I’ll over-worry about who is correct (although I’m not sure it’s Grose), but it’s a quite warming little term and a few bakeries around the world have used it as their name.