The Top 100 Words Used in 1780 Not Used Today & Other Fun Facts
The word list is real 18th-century usage (Grose 1785, colonial glossaries, period letters), not invented “ye olde” filler.
In 1780 the United States was not yet a done deal. Charleston would fall to the British that May. Benedict Arnold was months from turning his coat. Congress was broke. And the English spoken in taverns, courts, kitchens, and camps was a thicker, dirtier, more local language than the one we type into phones.
Some of those words died because the things they named died: wigs, humors, corduroy roads, sugar-houses. Some died because polite print cleaned them out. Some simply drifted. A few of the dirtiest ones never died at all — they just went underground until the twentieth century dragged them back into the open.
This is not a list of “thee” and “thou.” Those were already old-fashioned by 1780. This is the working vocabulary of the late eighteenth century: what a farmer, a sailor, a lawyer, or a drunk actually said.
How to read 1780 English
Three rules help.
First, spelling was still a suggestion. Johnson’s dictionary (1755) had not yet flattened everyone. You will see shew for show, gaol for jail, musick, publick.
Second, many words we still have meant something else. Clever often meant healthy or good-natured, not smart. Nice still carried the older sense of precise or fastidious. Awful still meant full of awe. Gay meant cheerful. Computer was a person who computed.
Third, the best window on the street language of the 1780s is Francis Grose’s A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785). Johnson left the gutter out. Grose walked into it with a notebook.
The list
Meanings are the 1780 sense. Sample sentences are in the period register.
1. Advertisement — attention; a warning. “Give advertisement to the sentry.”
2. Apartment — a single room, not a flat.
3. Approbat / approbate — to approve. “Congress approbated the measure.”
4. Bait — to stop and feed horses; a rest on a journey.
5. Bawdy-basket — a seller of obscene books or ballads.
6. Belly-timber — food.
7. Bilboes — iron bars with sliding shackles; shipboard irons.
8. Blackguard — the lowest servant; later a scoundrel.
9. Blow the groundsils — to lie with a woman on the floor.
10. Blue ruin — gin.
11. Bobstick — a shilling’s worth of gin.
12. Bosom friend — a body louse.
13. Bottom — stamina; courage. “He has no bottom in a fight.”
14. Box the Jesuit — to masturbate.
15. Bridewell — a house of correction.
16. Bubble — to cheat. The South Sea Bubble still haunted the word.
17. Buckskin — a rustic American; a Virginia soldier.
18. Bully-trap — a meek-looking man who fights.
19. Bum-boat — a small boat selling goods to ships.
20. Bumfodder — toilet paper; worthless writing.
21. Cadge — to beg.
22. Cant — thieves’ slang; also hypocritical talk.
23. Catch-fart — a footman walking too close behind his master.
24. Chink — money (from the sound of coin).
25. Chirk — cheerful; in good spirits. Noah Webster already said New England was losing it.
26. Chitterling — a shirt ruffle, as well as pig intestine.
27. Clever — healthy, obliging, decent. Abigail Adams: “She is cleverly now.”
28. Clicket — copulation (from foxes).
29. Clodhopper — a plowman; heavy shoes.
30. Coachfellow — a close companion.
31. Cobblers’ punch — gin.
32. Cod — a pillow; also a fool.
33. Cony / cunny — rabbit; also a sexual slang that polite writers avoided.
34. Corduroy road — logs laid across swamp. A 1780 traveler called it “good medicine for a hypochondriac.”
35. Cove — a man (cant).
36. Crack — a whore; also a lie.
37. Cracksman — a burglar.
38. Cully — a dupe; a kept man.
39. Cut — drunk. “He is cut.”
40. Darbies — handcuffs.
41. Doodle — a fool; also penis in some slang.
42. Draggle-tail — a slattern whose skirts drag.
43. Dram — a small drink of spirits.
44. Duds — clothes.
45. Dun — a creditor who pesters.
46. Fag — to work hard; a junior boy who serves a senior. Not the later slur.
47. Famble — a hand (cant).
48. Fen — a whore; also marshland.
49. Fire-ship — a woman with venereal disease.
50. Flash — fashionable cant; knowing.
51. Footpad — a robber on foot.
52. Fribble — an effeminate, fussy man.
53. Frog’s wine — gin.
54. Fuddle — to drink; a drinking bout.
55. Gabey — a fool.
56. Gallipot — an apothecary (from the pots).
57. Gamon — deceitful talk.
58. Gaol / goal — jail.
59. Gig — a flighty girl; also a one-horse chaise.
60. Glim — a light; an eye.
61. Grog — rum and water. Admiral Vernon (“Old Grog”) had made it official in 1740.
62. Hedge-whore — a streetwalker who works the roads.
63. Hocus — to drug a drink.
64. Hogo — a strong stink (from haut goût).
65. Humours — the four fluids thought to govern health: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile.
66. Isinglass — mica glittering in sand; also a gelatin.
67. Jade — a worn-out horse; a contemptuous word for a woman.
68. Jakes — a privy.
69. Kick the bucket — already meaning to die.
70. Laced mutton — a prostitute.
71. Lift — to steal.
72. Lush — drink; a drunkard.
73. Madeira — the wine, and the island it came from; a gentleman’s drink.
74. Mott — a girl; a whore (cant).
75. Muckworm — a miser.
76. Mug — a face.
77. Nick — to cheat at cards; the devil.
78. Nimmer — a thief.
79. Norwich — to go to Norwich: to hang yourself (a grim local joke).
80. Ordinary — an inn’s set meal; also a prison chaplain.
81. Peepers — eyes.
82. Pogy — drunk.
83. Prad — a horse (cant).
84. Prig — a thief.
85. Pumpkin-head — a New Englander, from the old story of cutting hair with a pumpkin shell.
86. Quean — a bold woman; a whore.
87. Quiz — an odd person; to mock.
88. Rake / rakehell — a debauched man.
89. Rantum-scantum — copulation.
90. Rigmarole — a rambling tale (already current).
91. Rum — excellent, in cant (“rum cove”); also the spirit.
92. Salivation — mercury treatment that made the patient drool.
93. Sauce-box — an impudent person.
94. Scrub — a mean fellow.
95. Shag — to copulate (older than the later haircut).
96. Small beer — weak beer; also a trivial matter.
97. Snacks — shares. “Go snacks” = go halves.
98. Spice — to rob.
99. Tallywags / twiddle-diddles — testicles.
100. Wench — a young woman; often a servant or a sexual partner, depending on the mouth that said it.
Curse words then and now
Polite 1780 print was prim. Spoken 1780 was not.
What shocked a drawing room then:
- Taking the Lord’s name in vain (God’s wounds → zounds; God’s blood → ’sblood; by God).
- Damn and damned. These were serious. A gentleman could fight over them.
- Sexual words in mixed company. The act had a large slang vocabulary. The printed page usually did not.
What did not work like a modern F-bomb:
- Bloody was coarse in Britain and getting coarser. Americans used it less as a mere intensifier.
- Hell was real theology, not decoration.
Grose happily lists sugar-stick (penis), notch / gigg / madge (vulva), ballocks, arbor vitae, beard-splitter. Sailors and soldiers had been saying the ancestors of our worst words for centuries. The difference is publication. From the late 1600s through most of the 1800s, fuck was treated as unprintable in respectable dictionaries. It lived in songs, graffiti, court records, and private manuscripts (Robert Burns kept his dirtiest verses for a private book).
What fuck meant in 1780
It meant what it means now: to copulate. It is Germanic — related to words for strike, thrust, push — not an acronym for “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” or “Fornication Under Consent of the King.” Those are later folk etymologies and they are false.
It is attested in English by the early 1500s (Scottish fukkit, 1503; a ciphered line about monks who “fuccant” the wives of Ely even earlier). By 1780 it was old, common in speech, and banned from polite paper. Johnson did not put it in. Most dictionaries from the 1790s to the 1960s pretended it did not exist.
So: same meaning, opposite public status.
Your Daughters A Pussy
Three lives, stacked:
- Cat / endearment — from puss, 1500s–1600s. Fathers in novels call daughters “pussy” into the 1850s without blinking (Uncle Tom’s Cabin does this).
- Female genitalia — double meanings show up by the late 1600s (D’Urfey and others). The sense is clearly slang by the late 1800s and becomes the default vulgar sense in the 20th century.
- Coward / weakling — this is late. The “you’re a pussy” insult in the modern American sense is mainly post-1960s, though “pussy” for an over-tame or unmanly man exists earlier in a milder form.
In 1780 you could say pussy to a child about a cat and nobody would faint.
Words that were heavy then and light now — and the reverse
- Awful — 1780: inspiring terror or reverence. Now: mildly bad.
- Awesome — 1780s–1800s: producing awe (closer to awful). The “that skate trick was awesome” sense is 20th century, especially late 20th.
- Cool — 1780: temperature, or composure (“keep cool”). The jazz/approval slang (“that’s cool”) is African American and mid-20th century, popularized in the 1940s–50s. A 1780 speaker would not call a hat cool unless it was sitting in the shade.
- Nice — still often “fine, exact, particular,” sometimes “foolish.”
- Silly — older sense “innocent, rustic, simple” was fading but not dead.
- Pretty — could mean clever or considerable (“a pretty sum”).
- Meat — often just food, not only animal flesh.
- Girl — could still mean a young servant of either sex in some dialects; usually female.
- Conversation — could mean sexual intercourse in legal and moral writing (“criminal conversation” = adultery).
Forbidden-then-normal is the story of cool and awesome. Forbidden-then-still-forbidden-but-everywhere is the story of fuck.
Things they did in 1780 that we mostly do not
Wigs and powder. Men of any claim to respectability wore wigs or powdered their own hair. Many shaved the scalp under the wig to fight lice. Britain taxed hair powder in 1795 and the fashion collapsed within a few years. Judges and barristers kept the costume as a fossil.
Bloodletting and humours. A flushed fever meant “too much blood.” The doctor opened a vein or put on leeches. George Washington was bled heavily in his last illness in 1799.
Mercury as medicine. Calomel (mercurous chloride) was a standard purge for constipation, fevers, “biliousness,” and above all syphilis. The goal in pox treatment was to “salivate” the patient — dose mercury until spit ran in pints, on the theory that the venom flowed out with the drool. Teeth loosened. Jaws rotted. Hands shook. Hatters who used mercury nitrate to felt fur got the same tremors: “mad as a hatter” is not a metaphor invented by Lewis Carroll. It was occupational poisoning. Lewis and Clark carried “Rush’s Thunderbolts,” calomel-and-jalap pills so violent that archaeologists can still find mercury in their latrine soil.
Snuff. Gentlemen (and some ladies) inhaled powdered tobacco. A snuffbox was a social prop.
Small beer at breakfast. Water was often unsafe. Weak beer was a caloric, slightly antiseptic default drink for children and servants.
No daily full-body bath for most people. Linen next to the skin was changed when possible. Hands and face were washed. A full immersion meant hauling and heating water. Smell was managed with powder, perfume, and clean cuffs.
Patches and paint. Fashionable women (and some men) wore black silk patches on the face. White lead paint sat on skin for years and slowly poisoned the wearer.
Women did not shave their legs. In 1780 almost no one in America or Britain thought of a woman’s leg hair as a public problem. Skirts were long. The American habit of shaving underarms starts with fashion and advertising around 1915 (Gillette’s Milady Décolletée, sleeveless dresses). Leg shaving follows as hemlines rise in the 1920s and becomes a mass custom in the 1940s, especially when wartime nylon shortages made stockings scarce. They did not have a 1780 word for “shaving one’s legs,” because they were not doing it. Face hair on women was another matter: that was plucked or treated with depilatory pastes.
Public hanging as entertainment. Crowds came. Last speeches were printed and sold.
Dueling. Gentlemen still settled insults with pistols or swords, though the custom was already argued over.
What was with mercury?
Mercury is quicksilver. It is liquid at room temperature, bright, and — in 1780 — half miracle and half curse.
Doctors used it because it did something obvious. Calomel purged the bowels. Syphilis treatment made the patient spectacularly sick, and when the disease went into a quiet phase the doctor took credit. The metal also showed up in:
- hats (carroting fur with mercury nitrate)
- mirrors and scientific instruments
- some cosmetics
- “blue mass” and other patent pills well into the 19th century
What they could not see: mercury attacks nerves, kidneys, and brain. The cure and the poison were the same bottle.
What was with radium?
Radium does not belong to 1780. Marie and Pierre Curie isolated it in 1898. Then the 20th century fell in love with glow.
Because radium could treat some cancers, marketers decided it was a tonic. It went into:
- water jars that “irradiated” drinking water
- toothpaste and cosmetics
- chocolate (in some European products)
- the paint on watch dials
Factory girls who pointed their brushes with their lips — the Radium Girls of New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut — painted their teeth and nails for a joke and then watched their jaws die. Eben Byers, a wealthy amateur golf champion, drank Radithor by the bottle and had to have his jaw removed. The fad was mostly dead by the late 1930s, after law and lawsuits caught up.
1780 feared miasma and humours. 1920 feared nothing that glowed. Both were wrong in opposite directions.
A short 1780 sentence, translated
Period:
“The flash cove was cut on blue ruin, blew up a hedge-quean in the jakes, and was lagged to bridewell before the ordinary could say amen.”
Now:
“The showy fellow got drunk on gin, had a streetwalker in the privy, and was hauled to the house of correction before the prison chaplain could finish the prayer.”
Same species. Different dictionary.
English in 1780 was not a costume. It was a working tool with a large dead inventory: words for wigs, humours, gin, thieves, and bodies that print later sanded off. The sexual vocabulary was already old; respectability hid it. Words we now use as slang praise — cool, awesome — then meant temperature and terror. Fuck meant then what it means now and could not be put in a dictionary. Pussy was still first a cat. Women did not shave their legs. Doctors dosed mercury until the patient drooled. A century and more later, people drank radium on purpose. Language did not get cleaner. It got different, and then it got loud again.
Another 100 words from around 1780
The first hundred were the working kit. This second hundred is the spare drawer: insults, drinks, body parts with better names than ours, and words that make a 1780 sentence sound like it was written by a man who had just left a tavern and a hanging.
101. Abbess — a bawd; mistress of a brothel. “The abbess kept six girls above the gin-shop.”
102. Abigail — a lady’s waiting-maid.
103. Abram — naked; also a beggar feigning madness.
104. Addle-plot — a spoilsport.
105. Admiral of the narrow seas — a drunk who vomits into the lap opposite.
106. Anglers — thieves who hook goods from shop windows with a stick.
107. Apple-dumpling shop — a woman’s bosom.
108. April fool — already the first-of-April dupe.
109. Arbor vitae — the penis.
110. Babes in the wood — men in the stocks.
111. Balderdash — adulterated wine; later, nonsense.
112. Bamboozle — to deceive. Already current.
113. Beard-splitter — a man much given to wenching.
114. Beetle-browed — heavy-browed; sullen.
115. Betwattled — bewildered; out of one’s senses.
116. Bill of sale — a widow’s mourning clothes.
117. Blind Cupid — the backside.
118. Bone-box — the mouth.
119. Bottle-headed — void of wit.
120. Brother of the quill — a writer.
121. Bufflehead — a blockhead.
122. Butcher’s dog — one who lies by the beef without touching it; a joke on some husbands.
123. Cackling farts — eggs.
124. Captain Queernabs — a shabby, ill-dressed fellow.
125. Chimping merry — merry with drink.
126. Clap — gonorrhea. “He went out by Had’em and came home by Clapham.”
127. Clout — a blow; also a handkerchief.
128. Cly — money, or a pocket.
129. Comfortable importance — a wife.
130. Cupid’s kettle-drums — breasts.
131. Darbies — fetters. (Worth repeating because it lived so long.)
132. Dicked in the nob — cracked in the head.
133. Dog-booby — an awkward lout.
134. Duke of limbs — a tall, badly made man.
135. Eternity box — a coffin.
136. Flaybottomist — a schoolmaster (he flays bottoms).
137. Flash the hash — to vomit.
138. Fartleberries — dried dung clinging about the anus. Grose did not flinch.
139. Garret / upper story — the head. “His garret is unfurnished.”
140. Gilflurt — a vain, flighty girl.
141. Gingamabobs — testicles.
142. Gundiguts — a fat, wheezy fellow.
143. Hatchet-faced — sharp-featured.
144. Head-rails — teeth.
145. Heart’s ease — gin.
146. Hickey — tipsy; given to hiccups.
147. Hop the twig — to run away; later, to die.
148. Irish apricots — potatoes.
149. Jolly nob — the head.
150. Just-ass — a justice of the peace (the pun is the point).
151. Kittle-pitchering — wrecking a long-winded story by picking at tiny details.
152. Knowledge-box — the head.
153. Knight of the trencher — a great eater.
154. Lickspittle — a toady.
155. Lobcock — a large relaxed penis; also a dull fellow.
156. Lump the lighter — to be transported as a convict.
157. Madge — the female pudenda, in Grose’s circle of synonyms.
158. Malingeror — one who feigns illness. The army already had the type.
159. Moonshine — smuggled spirits; also empty talk.
160. Mother of all saints — the female pudenda, again. They were not short of names.
161. Mumble-a-sparrow — a cruel fairground stunt: hands bound, try to bite a sparrow’s head.
162. New drop — the gallows trap.
163. Niffy-naffy fellow — a trifler.
164. Nincompoop — Grose’s joke definition: a man who has never seen his wife’s madge.
165. Nip-cheese — a miser; a ship’s purser who shorted the rations.
166. Norfolk capon / Yarmouth capon — a red herring.
167. Norway neckcloth — the pillory.
168. Nutmegs — testicles.
169. Odd’s plut — God’s blood, minced.
170. Old ewe dressed lamb-fashion — an older woman in a girl’s clothes.
171. Paddy whack — a brawny Irishman.
172. Paw-paw tricks — forbidden tricks.
173. Pettyfogging — quibbling lawyer-work. Still with us, barely.
174. Plug-tail — the penis.
175. Polish — to be in jail: polishing the king’s iron with one’s eyebrows.
176. Pot-wabbler — a man with a vote because he boiled his pot in the borough.
177. Rantipole — riotous; wild.
178. Slap-bang shop — a cheap eating-house that wanted cash at once.
179. Strip-me-naked — gin.
180. Thingumagag / thingamabob — already a word for the thing you cannot name.
181. Thatch-gallows — a rogue.
182. Toad-eater — a humble companion; a sycophant.
183. Tony — a simpleton.
184. Twiddlepoop — a fussy, unmanly fellow.
185. Whipper-snapper — already a small, noisy person.
186. Wry-mouth and a pissing pair of breeches — hanging.
187. Wry-neck day — hanging day.
188. Xantippe — a shrewish wife (from Socrates’s).
189. Yaffling — eating (cant).
190. Yam — to eat heartily.
191. Yankey / Yankey Doodle — a country lout; then a New Englander; then an American. Grose already has the American sense forming.
192. Yarmouth pye — a highly spiced herring pie Norwich owed the king.
193. Yarum — milk (cant).
194. Yea-and-nay man — a Quaker; a man who will only say yes or no.
195. Yellow — jealous. “He looks yellow.”
196. Zad / zed — crooked as the letter Z; a deformed person.
197. Zany — a mountebank’s clown.
198. Zedland — the West Country, where they said zee for see.
199. Zouch — a slovenly fellow.
200. Comfortable importance is already 129. Take Cupid’s kettle drums as the pair and add Newgate — London’s great prison, and shorthand for the whole thief-world Grose was cataloguing.
Two hundred is enough to prove the point: they were not short of language. They were short of print that would admit it.
How Yankee wandered in
By Grose’s day Yankey or Yankey Doodle could still mean a rustic simpleton. The war had already begun turning it into a name for New England men, then for Americans at large. The British sang it as a sneer. The Americans kept the tune and changed the joke. That is how a lot of 1780 language worked: insult first, badge later.
Francis Grose’s book —
Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
First edition: London, S. Hooper, No. 212 High Holborn, 1785.
Grose died in 1791. Under U.S. and U.K. rules this is public domain. You can reprint the 1785 text, the 1788 second edition, the 1796 third, or the expanded 1811 Lexicon Balatronicum / 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.
Best free full text to download and paste or split into its own post:
- Project Gutenberg (1811 expanded edition, clean text): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5402
- Internet Archive scan of the 1785 first edition: https://archive.org/details/grosevulgartongue
- Internet Archive / Google scan of later Grose: https://archive.org/details/grosesclassical00grosgoog
Public-domain sampler (Grose’s manner)
Out of Grose’s book, they are the voice:
ABBESS, or LADY ABBESS. A bawd, the mistress of a brothel.
ABRAM COVE. A naked or poor man; also a lusty strong rogue.
ADMIRAL OF THE NARROW SEAS. One who from drunkenness vomits into the lap of the person sitting opposite him.
ANGLERS. Pilferers, or petty thieves, who, with a stick having a hook at the end, steal goods out of shop windows.
BLUE RUIN. Gin.
BONE BOX. The mouth.
BOX THE JESUIT. To masturbate; a crime, it is said, much practised by the reverend fathers of that society.
BUTCHER’S DOG. To lie by the beef without touching it; a simile often applicable to married men.
CLAP. A venereal taint. He went out by Had’em, and came round by Clapham home; i.e. he went out a-wenching, and got a clap.
COMFORTABLE IMPORTANCE. A wife.
ETERNITY BOX. A coffin.
GARRET, or UPPER STORY. The head. His garret is unfurnished; i.e. he is a fool.
KICK THE BUCKET. To die.
KNOWLEDGE BOX. The head.
LACED MUTTON. A prostitute.
NEW DROP. The scaffold, used at Newgate for hanging criminals.
POLISH. To be in jail. Polishing the king’s iron with one’s eyebrows, by looking through the grated windows.
STRIP ME NAKED. Gin.
YANKEY, or YANKEY DOODLE. A booby or country lout; a name given to the New England men in North America.
Francis Grose (c. 1731–1791) was an antiquary, a militia captain, a fat man who liked taverns, and the first English lexicographer who treated slang as if it were worth the same attention Johnson gave to Milton.
Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) was the language of pulpits and poems. Grose’s A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London: S. Hooper, 1785) was the language of Newgate, Covent Garden, the fleet, the camp, and the gin-shop. He walked at night with a notebook and a man named Tom Cocking. He listened to sailors, soldiers, thieves, bailiffs, and whores. Then he printed what Johnson would not.
The book is public domain. Grose died in 1791. You may reprint the 1785 first edition, the 1788 second, the 1796 third, or the expanded 1811 Lexicon Balatronicum, commonly sold as the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.
Full free texts:
What follows is a long selected A-to-Z, not the whole book. Definitions stay close to Grose and the 1811 enlargement. Short notes in brackets are modern signposts, not his.
How to read him
CANT in an entry means thieves’ or beggars’ talk.
SEA PHRASE means the navy and the merchant fleet.
He spells like an eighteenth-century man: a-se, gaol, shew.
He is obscene on purpose. That is the point of the book.
A
ABBESS, or LADY ABBESS. A bawd, the mistress of a brothel.
ABEL-WACKETS. Blows given on the palm of the hand with a twisted handkerchief, instead of a ferula; a jocular punishment among seamen, who sometimes play at cards for wackets.
ABIGAIL. A lady’s waiting-maid.
ABRAM. Naked. CANT.
ABRAM COVE. A naked or poor man; also a lusty, strong rogue. CANT.
ABRAM MEN. Pretended mad men.
TO SHAM ABRAM. To pretend sickness.
ACADEMY, or PUSHING SCHOOL. A brothel. The Floating Academy: the hulks.
ACE OF SPADES. A widow.
TO CAST UP ONE’S ACCOUNTS. To vomit.
ACORN. You will ride a horse foaled by an acorn: you will be hanged. See THREE-LEGGED MARE.
ACT OF PARLIAMENT. Small beer. Five pints of it a landlord was once obliged to give a soldier gratis.
ACTEON. A cuckold. Diana planted horns on Actaeon.
ACTIVE CITIZEN. A louse.
ADAM’S ALE. Water.
ADAM TILER. A pickpocket’s associate, who receives the stolen goods and runs off with them. CANT.
ADDLE PATE. An inconsiderate foolish fellow.
ADDLE PLOT. A spoil-sport, a mar-all.
ADMIRAL OF THE BLUE. A publican in a blue apron.
ADMIRAL OF THE NARROW SEAS. One who from drunkenness vomits into the lap of the person sitting opposite him. SEA PHRASE.
AFFIDAVIT MEN. False witnesses for hire; knights of the post.
AFTER-CLAP. A demand after the bill has been paid; any sting that arrives when you thought the business finished.
AGAINST THE GRAIN. Unwilling.
AIR AND EXERCISE. He has had air and exercise: he has been whipped at the cart’s tail.
ALDERMAN. A roasted turkey garnished with sausages — the sausages standing in for the gold chain.
ALDGATE. A draught on the pump at Aldgate: a bad bill of exchange.
ALE DRAPER. An alehouse keeper.
ALL HOLIDAY. It is all holiday with him: it is over.
ALL NATIONS. The slops of every spirit in a dram-shop, poured into one vessel.
ALLS. A country sign of five figures: the king governs all, the bishop prays for all, the lawyer pleads for all, the soldier fights for all, the countryman pays for all.
ALTITUDES. The man is in his altitudes: he is drunk.
ANGLERS. Pilferers who hook goods from shop windows with a stick. Also those who draw in the unwary to prick at the belt.
ANGLING FOR FARTHINGS. Begging out of a prison window with a cap or box on a string.
ANKLE. A girl who is got with child is said to have sprained her ankle.
APE LEADER. An old maid. Their punishment after death, it was said, would be leading apes in hell.
B
BABES IN THE WOOD. Criminals in the stocks.
BALDERDASH. Adulterated wine. [Later: nonsense.]
BALLOCKS. The testicles of a man or beast.
BAMBOOZLE. To deceive.
BAWDY-BASKET. A seller of obscene books, ballads, pins, and such.
BEARD-SPLITTER. A man much given to wenching.
BEETLE-BROWED. Sullen; heavy-browed.
BETWATTLED. Surprised, confounded, out of one’s senses.
BILL OF SALE. A widow’s weeds.
BLACKGUARD. Originally the lowest scullions and link-boys; later a scoundrel.
BLIND CHEEKS. The breech. Buss blind cheeks: kiss mine a-se.
BLIND CUPID. The backside.
BLOW THE GROUNDSILS. To lie with a woman on the floor.
BLUE RUIN. Gin.
BONE BOX. The mouth.
BOSOM FRIEND. A louse.
BOTTLE-HEADED. Void of wit.
BOTTOM. Stamina; spirit. Also the backside.
BOX THE JESUIT. To masturbate; a crime, it is said, much practised by the reverend fathers of that society.
BRIDEWELL. A house of correction.
BROTHER OF THE QUILL. An author.
BUBBLE. To cheat.
BUCKINGER’S BOOT. A sexual joke Grose uses as a test: if a woman does not blush at it, she already knows too much. [Matthew Buckinger was a famous limbless performer.]
BUFFLEHEAD. A blockhead.
BUM-BOAT. A small boat that sells provisions to ships.
BUMFODDER. Toilet paper; waste paper; a bad book.
BUTCHER’S DOG. One who lies by the beef without touching it; a simile often applicable to married men.
BUZMAN. A pickpocket.
BUZZARD. A simple fellow. A blind buzzard: a purblind person.
BYE BLOW. A bastard.
C
CACKLING FARTS. Eggs.
CADDEE. A helper; an under-strapper.
CAKE, or CAKEY. A foolish fellow.
CANDY. Drunk.
CANK. Dumb.
CAPON. A castrated cock; also a eunuch. Norfolk capon: a red herring.
CAPTAIN QUEERNABS. A shabby, ill-dressed fellow.
CATCH-FART. A footboy who walks too close behind his master.
CHINK. Money.
CHIMPING MERRY. Exhilarated with liquor.
CLAP. A venereal taint. He went out by Had’em, and came round by Clapham home: he went out a-wenching and got a clap.
CLEVER. In New England often “healthy” or “obliging,” not merely ingenious.
CLICKET. Copulation of foxes; thence of men and women.
CLOUT. A blow. Also a handkerchief. To cloy the clout: to steal the handkerchief.
CLY. Money; a purse; a pocket. CANT.
COBBLERS’ PUNCH. Gin.
COMFORTABLE IMPORTANCE. A wife.
CONY / CUNNY. A rabbit — and the obvious double sense.
CORDUROY ROAD. Logs laid across a swamp. Riding one was said to be medicine for a hypochondriac.
COVE. A man. CANT.
CRACK. A whore; also a lie. Cracksman: a burglar.
CULLY. A dupe; a man kept by a woman.
CUPID’S KETTLE-DRUMS. The breasts.
CUT. Drunk. “He is cut.”
D
DARBies. Handcuffs; fetters.
DICKED IN THE NOB. Silly; crazed.
DOG-BOOBY. An awkward lout; a clodhopper.
DOODLE. A simple fellow; also the penis.
DRAGGLE-TAIL. A slattern whose skirts drag in the dirt.
DUKE OF LIMBS. A tall, awkward, ill-made fellow.
DUN. A creditor who pesters for payment.
DUTCH RECKONING. A lump bill without particulars — the sort produced at bawdy-houses and sponging-houses.
E
ETERNITY BOX. A coffin.
EVES DROPPER. One who lurks under windows. [Our eavesdropper.]
F
FAG. To work hard. Also a junior who serves a senior boy. [Not the later slur.]
FARTLEBERRIES. Dried dung clinging about the anus.
FEN. A whore. Also marshland.
FIRE-SHIP. A woman with the venereal disease.
FLASH. Knowing; in the fashion of thieves’ talk. A flash cove: one who speaks cant.
FLASH THE HASH. To vomit.
FLAYBOTTOMIST. A schoolmaster.
FLOATING ACADEMY. The hulks.
FOOTPAD. A robber on foot.
FRIBBLE. An effeminate, fussy man.
FROG’S WINE. Gin.
FUDDLE. To drink; a drinking bout.
G
GABEY. A fool.
GALLIPOT. An apothecary.
GAMON. Deceitful talk; humbug.
GARRET, or UPPER STORY. The head. His garret is unfurnished: he is a fool.
GILFLURT. A vain, flighty girl.
GINGAMABOBS. Testicles.
GLIM. A candle; a light; an eye.
GROG. Rum and water. Named for Admiral Vernon, “Old Grog,” from his grogram cloak.
GUNDIGUTS. A fat, wheezy fellow.
H
HATCHET-FACED. Sharp-featured.
HEAD-RAILS. Teeth.
HEART’S EASE. Gin.
HEDGE-WHORE. A streetwalker of the roads and hedges.
HICKEY. Tipsy; given to hiccups.
HOGO. A strong stink. From French haut goût.
HOP THE TWIG. To run off. Later also to die.
HUMOURS. Blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile — the old medical scheme still walking around in 1785.
I–J
IRISH APRICOTS. Potatoes.
JAKES. A privy.
JADE. A worn horse; a contemptuous word for a woman.
JOLLY NOB. The head. I’ll lump your jolly nob: I’ll knock your head.
JUST-ASS. A justice. The pun is the definition.
K
KICK THE BUCKET. To die.
KITTLE-PITCHERING. To wreck a long story by contradicting small points, especially at the start. Best done in company.
KNOWLEDGE-BOX. The head.
KNIGHT OF THE TRENCHER. A great eater.
L
LACED MUTTON. A prostitute.
LICKSPITTLE. A parasite; a sycophant.
LIFT. To steal.
LOBCOCK. A large relaxed penis; also a dull fellow.
LUMP THE LIGHTER. To be transported.
LUSH. Drink; a drunkard.
M
MADGE. Female pudenda.
MALINGEROR. One who feigns illness to avoid work or duty.
MOONSHINE. Smuggled spirits; empty talk.
MOTHER OF ALL SAINTS. Female pudenda.
MUCKWORM. A miser.
MUG. The face.
MUMBLE A SPARROW. A cruel sport at wakes and fairs: a man’s arms bound, a clipped sparrow in a hat, he tries to bite off the head.
N
NEW DROP. The scaffold used at Newgate.
NEWGATE. The prison, and the world attached to it.
NIFFY-NAFFY FELLOW. A trifler.
NINCOMPOOP. Grose’s joke: a fellow who never saw his wife’s madge.
NIP-CHEESE. A miser; a purser who shorted the men’s food.
NORFOLK CAPON. A red herring.
NORWAY NECKCLOTH. The pillory.
NUTMEGS. Testicles.
O–P
ODD’S PLUT. God’s blood, minced so the oath could pass.
OLD EWE DRESSED LAMB-FASHION. An older woman in a girl’s clothes.
ORDINARY. The prison chaplain; also a set meal at an inn.
PADDY WHACK. A brawny Irishman.
PAW-PAW TRICKS. Forbidden tricks.
PEEPERS. Eyes.
PETTYFOGGING. Quibbling lawyer’s work.
PLUG-TAIL. The penis.
POGY. Drunk.
POLISH. To be in jail. Polishing the king’s iron with one’s eyebrows.
POT-WABBLER. A voter qualified by having boiled his pot in the borough.
PRAD. A horse. CANT.
PRIG. A thief.
PUSHING SCHOOL. A brothel. Also a fencing school — the joke travels both ways.
Q–R
QUEAN. A bold woman; a whore.
RANTALLION. A man whose scrotum is longer than his penis; Grose compares it to a gun whose pouch hangs below the barrel.
RANTIPOLE. Riotous; wild.
RIGMAROLE. A rambling, pointless tale.
RUM. In cant: excellent. A rum cove: a good man to know — or a sharp one. Also the spirit.
S
SALIVATION. The mercury cure that made the patient drool until the doctor declared the pox expelled.
SAUCE-BOX. An impudent person.
SCRUB. A mean, shabby fellow.
SHAG. To copulate.
SLAP-BANG SHOP. A cheap cook-shop that wanted money at once, no credit.
SMALL BEER. Weak beer; a trivial matter.
SNACKS. Shares. To go snacks: to go halves.
SPICE. To rob.
STRIP ME NAKED. Gin.
SUGAR-STICK. The penis.
T
TALLYWAGS / TWIDDLE-DIDDLES. Testicles.
THATCH-GALLOWS. A rogue; a man of bad character.
THINGUMABOB. The thing you will not name.
THREE-LEGGED MARE. The gallows.
TOAD-EATER. A humble companion who swallows slights; a sycophant.
TONY. A simpleton.
TWIDDLEPOOP. A fussy, unmanly fellow.
U–W
UPPER BENJAMIN. A greatcoat. To sport an upper Benjamin: to wear one in style.
WENCH. A young woman; a servant; in many mouths, a sexual partner.
WHIPPER-SNAPPER. A small, noisy, insignificant person.
WOODEN MARE. The gallows again.
WRY MOUTH AND A PISSING PAIR OF BREECHES. Hanging.
WRY-NECK DAY. Hanging day.
X–Z
XANTIPPE. A scolding wife. From Socrates’s.
YAFFLING. Eating. CANT.
TO YAM. To eat or stuff heartily.
YANKEY, or YANKEY DOODLE. A booby or country lout; a name given to the New England men in North America. A general appellation for an American.
YARMOUTH CAPON. A red herring. Yarmouth was famous for them.
YARMOUTH PYE. A highly spiced herring pie which the city of Norwich was by charter bound to present annually to the king.
YARUM. Milk. CANT.
YEA AND NAY MAN. A Quaker; a simple fellow who can only answer yes or no.
YELLOW. To look yellow: to be jealous.
ZAD, or ZED. Crooked like the letter Z. A mere zad: a deformed person.
ZANY. The jester or merry-andrew to a mountebank.
ZEDLAND. The west country, where they say zee for see and zun for sun.
ZOUCH. A slovenly fellow.
t
What the book is actually about
Grose is not a joke book that happened to use dirty words. He is a map.
Look at the clusters.
Gin. Blue ruin, cobblers’ punch, frog’s wine, heart’s ease, strip me naked, moonshine. This is London after the gin craze, when the cheapest spirit had more names than bread.
The gallows. Acorn horse, three-legged mare, wooden mare, new drop, wry-neck day, eternity box, air and exercise. A society that hanged in public needed a full vocabulary for it.
The body. Bone-box, knowledge-box, garret, peepers, head-rails, nutmegs, sugar-stick, madge, apple-dumpling shop. They named parts the way sailors named rigging: because you had to.
Work and rank. Abigail, catch-fart, ale draper, gallipot, brother of the quill, knight of the trencher, pot-wabbler. Every trade got a nickname. The nickname was rarely kind.
America sneaking in. Yankey Doodle is already there: first a rustic fool, then a New Englander, then an American. The Revolution is only a few years old when Grose writes. The insult is already turning into a name.
Source. Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), with readings also drawn from the public-domain 1811 enlargement.
Full text. gutenberg.org/ebooks/5402 · archive.org/details/grosevulgartongue
This page. A selected A-to-Z for readers of “The Top 100 Words Used in 1780 Not Used Today.” Not a complete reprint.
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