Immagini della pagina
PDF
ePub

GREEN SICKNESS. The disease of maids occasioned by ce libacy.

GREENHEAD. An inexperienced young man.

GREENHORN. A novice on the town, an undebauched young fellow, just initiated into the society of bucks and bloods. GREENWICH BARBERS, Retailers of sand from the pits at and about Greenwich, in Kent; perhaps they are styled barbers, from their constant shaving the sand-banks. GREENWICH GOOSE. A pensioner of Greenwich Hospital. GREGORIAN TREE. The gallows: so named from Gregory Brandon, a famous finisher of the law; to whom Sir William Segar, garter king of arms (being imposed on by Brooke, a herald), granted a coat of arms. GREY BEARD. Earthen jugs formerly used in public house for drawing ale: they had the figure of a man with a large beard stamped on them; whence probably they took the name: see Ben Jonson's Plays, Bartholomew Fair, &c. &c. Dutch earthen jugs, used for smuggling gin on the coasts of Essex and Suffolk, are at this time called grey beards.

GREY MARE. The grey mare is the better horse; said of a woman who governs her husband.

GREY PARSON. A farmer who rents the tithes of the rector or vicar.

GRIG. A farthing. A merry grig; a fellow as merry as a grig an allusion to the apparent liveliness of a grig, or young eel.

:

GRIM. Old Mr, Grim; death,

GRIMALKIN, A cat; mawkin signifies a hare in Scotland. GRIN. To grin in a glass case; to be anatomized for murder: the skeletons of many criminals are preserved in glass cases, at Surgeons' hall.

GRINAGOG, THE CAT'S UNCLE, A foolish grinning fellow, one who grins without reason.

GRINDERS, Teeth. Gooseberry grinder; the breech, Ask bogey, the gooseberry grinder; ask mine a-se,

To GRIND. To have carnal knowledge of a woman. GROATS. To save his groats; to come off handsomely: at the universities, nine groats are deposited in the hands of an academic officer, by every person standing for a degree; which if the depositor obtains with honour, the groats are returned to him.

GROG.

Rum and water. Grog was first introduced into the navy about the year 1740, by Admiral Vernon, to prevent the sailors intoxicating themselves with their allowance of rum or spirits, Groggy, or groggified; drunk.

GROG

GROG-BLOSSOM. A carbuncle, or pimple in the face, caused by drinking.

GROGGED. A grogged horse; a foundered horse.

GROGHAM. A horse.

Cant.

GROPERS. Blind men; also midwives.

GROUND SWEAT. A grave.

GROUND SQUIRREL. A hog, or pig. Sea term.
GRUB. Victuals. To grub; to dine.

GRUB STREET. A street near Moorfields, formerly the sup-
posed habitation of many persons who wrote for the book-
sellers: hence a Grub-street writer means a hackney au-
thor, who manufactures books for the booksellers.
GRUB STREET NEWS. Lying intelligence.

TO GRUBSHITE. To make foul or dirty.

GRUMBLE. To grumble in the gizzard; to murmur or repine. He grumbled like a bear with a sore head.

GRUMBLETONIAN. A discontented person; one who is always railing at the times or ministry.

GRUNTER. A hog; to grunt; to groan, or complain of sick

ness.

GRUNTER'S GIG. A smoaked hog's face.

GRUNTING PECK. Pork, bacon, or any kind of hog's flesh. GRUTS. Tea.

GUDGEON. One easily imposed on. To gudgeon; to swallow the bait, or fall into a trap: from the fish of that name, which is easily taken.

GULL. A simple credulous fellow, easily cheated.
GULLED. Deceived, cheated, imposed on.

GULLGROPERS. Usurers who lend money to the gamesters. GUM. Abusive language. Come, let us have no more of your gum.

GUMMY. Clumsy: particularly applied to the ancles of men or women, and the legs of horses.

GUMPTION, or RUM GUMPTION. Docility, comprehension, capacity.

GUN. He is in the gun; he is drunk: perhaps from an allusion to a vessel called a gun, used for ale in the universities.

GUNDIGUTS. A fat, pursy fellow.

GUNNER'S DAUGHTER. To kiss the gunner's daughter; to be tied to a gun and flogged on the posteriors: a mode of punishing boys on board a ship of war. GUNPOWDER. An old woman. Cant.

GUTS. My great guts are ready to eat my little ones; my guts begin to think my throat's cut; my guts curse my teeth: all expressions signifying the party is extremely hungry.

GUTS

GUTS AND GARBAGE. A very fat man or woman. More guts than brains; a silly fellow. He has plenty of guts, but no bowels: said of a hard, merciless, unfeeling person. GUTFOUNDERED. Exceeding hungry.

GUT SCRAPER, or TORMENTOR of CATGUT. A. fiddler. GUTTER LANE. The throat, the swallow, the red lane. See RED LANE.

GUTTING A QUART POT. Taking out the lining of it: i. e. drinking it off. Gutting an oyster; eating it. Gutting a house; clearing it of its furniture. See POULTERER. GUY. A dark lanthorn: an allusion to Guy Faux, the principal actor in the gunpowder plot. Stow the guy: conceal the lanthorn.

GUZZLE. Liquor. To guzzle; to drink greedily.
GUZZLE GUTS. One greedy of liquor.

GYBE, OF JY BE. Any writing or pass with a seal.
GYBING. Jeering or ridiculing.

GYLES, or GILES. Hopping Giles; a nick name for a lame. person: St. Giles was the tutelar saint of cripples.

GYP. A college runner or errand-boy at Cambridge, called at Oxford a scout. See SCOUT.

GYPSIES. A set of vagrants, who, to the great disgrace of our police, are suffered to wander about the country. They pretend that they derive their origin from the ancient Egyptians, who were famous for their knowledge in astronomy and other sciences; and, under the pretence of fortune-telling, find means to rob or defraud the ignorant and superstitious. To colour their impostures, they artificially discolour their faces, and speak a kind of gibberish peculiar to themselves. They rove up and down the country in large companies, to the great terror of the farmers, from whose geese, turkeys, and fowls, they take very considerable contributions.

When a fresh recruit is admitted into the fraternity, he is to take the following oath, administered by the principal maunder, after going through the annexed forms: First, a new name is given him by which he is ever after to be called; then standing up in the middle of the assembly, and directing his face to the dimber damber, or principal man of the gang, he repeats the following oath, which is dictated to him by some experienced member of the fraternity:

I, Crank Cuffin, do swear to be a true brother, and that I will in all things obey the commands of the great tawney prince, and keep his counsel and not divulge the secrets of my brethren.

I will never leave nor forsake the company, but observe and keep all the times of appointment, either by day or by night, in every place whatever.

I will not teach any one to cant, nor will I disclose our mysteries to them.

any of

I will take my prince's part against all that shall oppose him, or any of us, according to the utmost of my ability; nor will I suffer him, or any one belonging to us, to be abused by any strange abrams, rufflers, hookers, pailliards, swaddlers, Irish toyles, swigmen, whip jacks, jarkmen, bawdy baskets, dommerars, clapper dogeons, patricoes, or curtals; but will defend him, or them, as much as I can, against all other outliers whatever. I will not conceal aught I win out of libkins or from the ruffmans, but will preserve it for the use of the company. Lastly, I will cleave to my doxy wap stiffly, and will bring her duds, marjery praters, goblers, grunting cheats, or tibs of the buttery, or any thing else I can come at, as winnings for her weppings.

The canters have, it seems, a tradition, that from the three first articles of this oath, the first founders of a certain boastful, worshipful fraternity (who pretend to derive their origin from the earliest times) borrowed both the hint and form of their establishment; and that their pretended derivation from the first Adam is a forgery, it being only from the first Adam Tiler: see ADAM TILER. At the admission of a new brother, a general stock is raised for booze, or drink, to make themselves merry on the occasion. As for peckage or eatables, they can procure without money; for while some are sent to break the ruffmans, or woods and bushes, for firing, others are detached to filch geese, chickens, hens, ducks (or mallards), and pigs. Their morts are their butchers, who presently make bloody work with what living things are brought them; and having made holes in the ground under some remote hedge in an obscure place, they make a fire and boil or broil their food; and when it is enough, fall to work tooth and nail : and having eaten more like beasts than men, they drink more like swine than human creatures, entertaining one another all the time with songs in the canting dialect. As they live, so they lie, together promiscuously, and know not how to claim a property either in their goods or children and this general interest ties them more firmly toge ther than if all their rags were twisted into ropes, to bind them indissolubly from a separation; which detestable union is farther consolidated by the above oath.

They

They stroll up and down all summer-time in droves, and dexterously pick pockets, while they are telling of fortunes; and the money, rings, silver thimbles, &c. which they get, are instantly conveyed from one hand to another, till the remotest person of the gang (who is not suspected because they come not near the person robbed) gets possession of it; so that, in the strictest search, it is impos sible to recover it; while the wretches with imprecations, oaths, and protestations, disclaim the thievery. That by which they are said to get the most money, is, when young gentlewomen of good families and reputation have happened to be with child before marriage, a round sum is often bestowed among the gypsies, for some one mort to take the child; and as that is never heard of more by the true mother and family, so the disgrace is kept concealed from the world; and, if the child lives, it never knows its parents.

HAN

HABERDASHER OF PRONOUNS. A schoolmaster, or

usher.

HACKNEY WRITER. One who writes for attornies or booksellers.

HACKUM. Captain Hackum; a bravo, a slasher.

HAD'EM. He has been at Had'em, and came home by Clapham; said of one who has caught the venereal disease. HAIR SPLITTER. A man's yard.

HALBERT. A weapon carried by a serjeant of foot. To get a halbert; to be appointed a serjeant. To be brought to the halberts; to be flogged à la militaire: soldiers of the infantry, when flogged, being commonly tied to three halberts, set up in a triangle, with a fourth fastened across them. He carries the halbert in his face; a saying of one promoted from a serjeant to a commission officer. HALF A HOG. Sixpence.

HALF SEAS OVER. Almost drunk.

HAMLET. A high constable. Cant.

HAMS, or HAMCASES. Breeches.

HAND. A sailor. We lost a hand; we lost a sailon Bear a hand; make haste. Hand to fist; opposite: the same as tête-à-tête, or cheek by joul.

HAND AND POCKET SHOP. An eating house, where ready money is paid for what is called for.

HAND

« IndietroContinua »