LAZY BONES. An instrument like a pair of tongs, for old or very fat people to take any thing from the ground without stooping.

LEAF. To go off with the fall of the leaf; to be hanged: criminals in Dublin being turned off from the outside of the prison by the falling of a board, propped up, and moving on a hinge, like the leaf of a table. Irish term.

To LEAK. To make water.

LEAKY. Apt to blab; one who cannot keep a secret is said to be leaky.

LEAPING OVER THE SWORD. An ancient ceremonial said to constitute a military marriage. A sword being laid down on the ground, the parties to be married joined hands, when the corporal or serjeant of the company repeated these words:

Leap rogue, and jump whore,

And then you are married for evermore.

Whereupon the happy couple jumped hand in hand over the sword, the drum beating a ruffle; and the parties were ever after considered as man and wife.

LEAST IN SIGHT. To play least in sight; to hide, keep out of the way, or make one's self scarce.

LEATHER. To lose leather; to be galled with riding on horseback, or, as the Scotch express it, to be saddle sick. To leather also meant to beat, perhaps originally with a strap: I'll leather you to your heart's content. Leatherheaded; stupid. Leathern conveniency; term used by quakers for a stage-coach.

LEERY. On one's guard. See PEERY.

LEFT-HANDED WIFE. A concubine; an allusion to an ancient German custom, according to which, when a man married his concubine, or a woman greatly his inferior, he gave her his left hand.

LEG. To make a leg; to bow. To give leg-bail and land security; to run away. To fight at the leg; to take unfair advantages: it being held unfair by back-sword players to strike at the leg. To break a leg; a woman who has had a bastard, is said to have broken a leg.

LEGGERS. Sham leggers; cheats who pretend to sell smuggled goods, but in reality only deal in old shop-keepers or damaged goods.

LENTEN FARE. Spare diet.

LETCH. A whim of the amorous kind, out of the common

LIBBEN. A private dwelling-house. Cant.
LIBKEN. A house to lie in. Cant.

To LICK. To beat; also to wash, or to paint slightly over.
I'll give you a good lick o' the chops; I'll give you a good
stroke or blow on the face. Jack tumbled into a cow
t--d, and nastied his best clothes, for which his father stept
up, and licked him neatly.-I'll lick you! the dovetail to
which is, Ifyou lick me all over, you won't miss
LICK SPITTLE. A parasite, or talebearer.

LIFT. To give one a lift; to assist.

A good hand at a dead lift; a good hand upon an emergency.

To lift

one's hand to one's head; to drink to excess, or to drink drams. To lift or raise one's elbow; the same. LIFT. See SHOPLIFTER, &c.

LIFTER. A crutch.

LIG. A bed. See LIB.

LIGHT BOB. A soldier of the light infantry company.
LIGHT-FINGERED. Thievish, apt to pilfer.

LIGHT-HEELED. Swift in running. A light-heeled wench; one who is apt, by the flying up of her heels, to fall flat on her back, a willing wench.

LIGHT HOUse. A man with a red fiery nose.

LIGHT TROOPs. Lice; the light troops are in full march; the lice are crawling about.

LIGHTMANS. The day. Cant.

LIGHTNING. Gin. A flash of lightning; a glass of gin. LIKENESS. A phrase used by thieves when the officers or turnkeys are examining their countenance. As the traps are taking our likeness; the officers are attentively observing us.

LILIPUTIAN, A diminutive man or woman: from Gulliver's Travels, written by Dean Swift, where an imaginary kingdom of dwarfs of that name is described,

LILY WHITE. A chimney-sweeper.

LILY SHALLOW. Whip slang) A white driving hat.

LIMBS. Duke of limbs; a tall awkward fellow.

LIMB OF THE LAW. An inferior or pettyfogging attorney.

LIMBO. A prison, confinement.

TO LINE. A term for the act of coition between dog and bitch.

LINE OF THE OLD AUTHOR. A dram of brandy.

LINE. To get a man into a line, i. e. to divert his atten-
tion by a ridiculous or absurd story. To humbug.
LINGO. Language. An outlandish lingo; a foreign tongue.
The parlezvous lingo; the French language,

LINEN ARMOURERS. Taylors.

LION.

LOB

LION. To tip the lion; to squeeze the nose of the party tipped, flat to his face with the thumb. To shew the lions and tombs; to point out the particular curiosities of any place, to act the ciceroni : an allusion to Westminster Abbey, and the Tower, where the tombs and lions are shewn. A lion is also a name given by the gownsmen of Oxford to an inhabitant or visitor. It is a standing joke among the city wits to send boys and country folks, on the first of April, to the Tower-ditch, to see the lions washed.

LIQUOR. To liquor one's boots; to drink before a journey: among Roman Catholics, to administer the extreme unction.

LITTLE BARBARY. Wapping.

LITTLE BREECHES. A familiar appellation used to a little boy.

LITTLE CLERGYMAN. A young chimney-sweeper. LITTLE EASE. A small dark cell in Guildhall, London, where disorderly apprentices are confined by the city chamberlain: it is called Little Ease from its being so low that a lad cannot stand upright in it.

LITTLE SNAKESMAN. A little boy who gets into a house through the sink-hole, and then opens the door for his accomplices: he is so called, from writhing and twisting like a snake, in order to work himself through the narrow passage,

LIVE LUMBER. A term used by sailors, to signify all landsmen on board their ships.

LIVE STOCK.

Lice or fleas.

LOAF. To be in bad loaf, to be in a disagreeable situation, or in trouble,

LOB. A till in a tradesman's shop. To frisk a lob; to rob a till. See FLASH PANNEY.

LOB. Going on the lob; going into a shop to get change for gold, and secreting some of the change.

LOB'S POUND. A prison. Dr. Grey, in his notes on Hudibras, explains it to allude to one Doctor Lob, a dissenting preacher, who used to hold forth when conventicles were prohibited, and had made himself a retreat by means of a trap door at the bottom of his pulpit. Once being pursued by the officers of justice, they followed him through divers subterraneous passages, till they got into a dark cell, from whence they could not find their way out, but calling to some of their companions, swore they had got into Lob's Pound.

LOBCOCK. A large relaxed penis: also a dull inanimate fellow,

LOB

LON

LOBKIN. A house to lie in: also a lodging.

LOBLOLLEY Boy. A nickname for the surgeon's servant

on board a man of war, sometimes for the surgeon himself: from the water gruel prescribed to the sick, which is called loblolley.

LOBONIAN SOCIETY. A society which met at Lob Hall,at the King and Queen, Norton Falgate, by order of Lob the great. LOBSCOUSE. A dish much eaten at sea, composed of salt beef, biscuit and onions, well peppered, and stewed together. LOBSTER. A nick name for a soldier, from the colour of his clothes. To boil one's lobster, for a churchman to become a soldier: lobsters, which are of a bluish black, being made red by boiling. I will not make a lobster kettle of my ****, a reply frequently made by the nymphs of the Point at Portsmouth, when requested by a soldier to grant him a favour.

Lock. A scheme, a mode. I must fight that lock; I must try that scheme.

Lock. Character. He stood a queer lock; he bore but an indifferent character. A lock is also a buyer of stolen goods, as well as the receptacle for them.

LOCK HOSPITAL. An hospital for venereal patients. LOCK UP HOUSE. A spunging house; a public house kept by sheriff's officers, to which they convey the persons they have arrested, where they practise every species of imposition and extortion with impunity. Also houses kept by agents or crimps, who enlist, or rather trepan, men to serve the East India or African company as soldiers. LOCKERAM-JAWED. Thin-faced, or lanthorn-jawed. See LANTHORN JAWED.

LOCKSMITH'S DAUGHTER. A key.

LOGGERHEAD. A blockhead, or stupid fellow. We three loggerheads be: a sentence frequently written under two Ireads, and the reader by repeating it makes himself the third. A loggerhead is also a double-headed, or bar shot of iron. To go to loggerheads; to fall to fighting. LOLL. Mother's loll; a favourite child, the mother's darling. LOLL TONGUE. He has been playing a game at loll tongue; he has been salivated.

LOLLIPOPS. Sweet lozenges purchased by children.

To LOLLOP. To lean with one's elbows on a table.
LOLLPOOP. A lazy, idle drone.

LOMBARD FEVER. Sick of the lombard fever; i. e. of the

idles.

LONG ONE. A hare; a term used by poachers.

LONG.

LOU

LONG. Great. A long price; a great price.

LONG GALLERY. Throwing, or rather trundling, the dice the whole length of the board.

LONG MEG. A jeering name for a very tall woman: from one famous in story, called Loug Meg of Westminster. LONG SHANKS. A long-legged person.

LONG STOMACH.

A voracious appetite.

:

LONG TONGUED. Loquacious, not able to keep a secret. He is as long-tongued as Granny Granny was an idiot who could lick her own eye. See GRANNY. LONG-WINDED. A long-winded parson; one who preached long, tedious sermons. A long-winded paymaster; one who takes long credit.

Loo. For the good of the loo; for the benefit of the company or community.

LOOBY. An awkward, ignorant fellow.

LOOKING AS IF ONE COULD NOT HELP IT. Looking like a
simpleton, or as if one could not say boh! to a goose.
LOOKING-GLASS. A chamber pot, jordan, or member mug.
LOON, or LOUT. A country bumkin, or clown.
LOONSLATE. Thirteen pence halfpenny.

LOOPHOLE. An opening, or means of escape. To find a
loophole in an act of parliament; i. e. a method of evad-
ing it.
LOP-SIDED. Uneven, having one side larger or heavier than
the other: boys' paper kites are often said to be lop-sided.
To LOPE. To leap, to run away. He loped down the dan-
cers; he ran down stairs.

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9

LORD. A crooked or hump-backed man. These unhappy people afford great scope for vulgar raillery; such as, Did you come straight from home? if so, you have got confoundedly bent by the way. Don't abuse the geniman, adds a by-stander, he has been grossly insulted already; don't you see his back's up?' Or some one asks him if the show is behind; because I see,' adds he, you have the drum at your back.' Another piece of vulgar wit is let loose on a deformed person: If met by a party of soldiers on their march, one of them observes that that gentleman is on his march too, for he has got his knapsack at his back. It is said in the British Apollo, that the title of lord was first given to deformed persons in the reign of Richard IIL from several persons labouring under that misfortune being created peers by him; but it is more probably derived from the Greek word nodos, crooked.

LOUSE. A gentleman's companion. He will never louse a grey head of his own; he will never live to be old.