HUM

a man of confused ideas, or one thick of speech, whose words sound like water bubbling out of a bottle. Also an instrument used for smoaking through water in the East Indies, called likewise a caloon, and hooker.

HUBBLE DE SHUFF. Confusedly. To fire hubble de shuff, to fire quick and irregularly. Old military term. HUBBUB. A noise, riot, or disturbance.

He is in

HUCKLE MY BUFF. Beer, egg, and brandy, made hot. HUCKSTERS. Itinerant retailers of provisions. hucksters hands; he is in a bad way.

To HUE. To lash. The cove was hued in the naskin; the rogue was soundly lashed in bridewell. Cant.

To HUFF. To reprove, or scold at any one; also to bluster, bounce, ding, or swagger. A captain huff; a noted bully. To stand the huff; to be answerable for the reckoning in a public house.

HUG. To hug brown bess; to carry a firelock, or serve as a private soldier. He hugs it as the Devil hugs a witch: said of one who holds any thing as if he was afraid of losing

it. HUGGER MUGGER. By stealth, privately, without making an appearance. They spent their money in a hugger mugger way.

HUGOTONTHEONBIQUIFFINARIANS. A society existing in

1748.

HULKY, OF HULKING. A great hulky fellow; an over-grown clumsy lout, or fellow.

HULVER-HEADED. Having a hard impenetrable head; hulver, in the Norfolk dialect, signifying holly, a hard and solid wood.

To HUM, or HUMBUG. To deceive, or impose on one by some story or device. A humbug; a jocular imposition, or deception. To hum and haw; to hesitate in speech, also to delay, or be with difficulty brought to consent to any matter or business.

HUMS. Persons at church. There is a great number of hums in the autem; there is a great congregation in the church. HUM BOX. A pulpit.

HUM CAP. Very old and strong beer, called also stingo. See STINGO.

HUM DRUM. A hum drum fellow; a dull tedious narrator, a bore; also a set of gentlemen, who (Bailey says) used to meet near the Charter House, or at the King's Head in St. John's-street, who had more of pleasantry, and less of mystery, than the free masons.

HUM DURGLON. An imaginary illness. He has got the hum

dur

durgeon, the thickest part of his thigh is nearest his a-se; i. e. nothing ails him except low spirits.

HUMBUGS. The brethren of the venerable society of humbugs was held at brother Haliam's, in Goodman's Fields. HUMMER. A great lye, a rapper. See RAPPER.

HUMMING LIQUOR. Double ale, stout pharaoh. See PHA

RAOH.

HUMMUMS. A bagnio, or bathing house.

HUMSTRUM. A musical instrument made of a mopstick, a bladder, and some packthread, thence also called a bladder and string, and hurdy gurdy; it is played on like a violin, which is sometimes ludicrously called a humstrum; sometimes, instead of a bladder, a tin canister is used.

HUMP. To hump; once a fashionable word for copulation. HUMPTY DUMPTY. A little humpty dumpty man or woman; a short clumsy person of either sex: also ale boiled with brandy.

TO HUNCH. To jostle, or thrust.

HUNCH-BACKED. Hump-backed.

HUNG BEEF. A dried bull's pizzle. How the dubber served the cull with hung beef; how the turnkey beat the fellow with a bull's pizzle.

HUNKS. A covetous miserable fellow, a miser; also the name of a famous bear mentioned by Ben Jonson. HUNT'S DOG. He is like Hunt's dog, will neither go to church nor stay at home. One Hunt, a labouring man at a small town in Shropshire, kept a mastiff, who on being shut up on Sundays, whilst his master went to church, howled so terribly as to disturb the whole village; wherefore his master resolved to take him to church with him: but when he came to the church door, the dog having perhaps formerly been whipped out by the sexton, refused to enter; whereupon Hunt exclaimed loudly against his dog's obstinacy, who would neither go to church nor stay at home. This shortly became a bye-word for discontented and whimsical persons.

HUNTING. Drawing in unwary persons to play or game. Cant.

HUNTING THE SQUIRREL. An amusement practised by postboys and stage-coachmen, which consists in following a one-horse chaise, and driving it before them, passing close to it, so as to brush the wheel, and by other means terrifying any woman or person that may be in it. A man whose turn comes for him to drink, before he has emptied his former glass, is said to be hunted.

HUNTSUP. The reveillier of huntsmen, sounded on the French horn, or other instrument. HURDY

HUP

HURDY GURDY. A kind of fiddle, originally made perhaps out of a gourd. See HUMSTRUM.

HURLY BURLY. A rout, riot, bustle or confusion.

HUSH.

Hush the cull; murder the fellow.

HUSH MONEY. Money given to hush up or conceal a robbery, theft, or any other offence, or to take off the evidence from appearing against a criminal.

Cant.

HUSKYLOUR. A guinea, or job. HUSSY. An abbreviation of housewife, but now always used as a term of reproach; as, How now, hussy? or, She is a light hussy.

HUZZA. Said to have been originally the cry of the huzzars or Hungarian light horse; but now the national shout of the English, both civil and military, in the sea phrase termed a cheer; to give three cheers being to huzza thrice. HYP, or HIP. A mode of calling to one passing by. Hip, Michael, your head's on fire; a piece of vulgar wit to a red haired man.

HYP. The hypochondriac: low spirits. He is hypped; he has got the blue devils, &c.

JAC

JABBER. To talk thick and fast, as great praters usually do, to chatter like a magpye; also to speak a foreign language. He jabbered to me in his damned outlandish parlez vous, but I could not understand him; he chattered to me in French, or some other foreign language, but I could not understand him.

JACK. A farthing, a small bowl serving as the mark for bowlers. An instrument for pulling off boots.

JACK ADAMS. A fool. Jack Adams's parish; Clerkenwell. JACK AT A PINCH. A poor hackney parson.

JACK IN A Box. A sharper, or cheat. A child in the mother's womb.

JACK IN AN OFFICE. An insolent fellow in authority. JACK KETCH. The hangman; vide DERRICK and KETCH. JACK NASTY FACE. A sea term, signifying a common

sailor.

JACK OF LEGS. A tall long-legged man; also a giant, said to be buried in Weston church, near Baldock, in Hertfordshire, where there are two stones fourteen feet dis

JAN

tant, said to be the head and feet stones of his grave. This giant, says Salmon, as fame goes, lived in a wood here, and was a great robber, but a generous one; for he plundered the rich to feed the poor: he frequently took bread for this purpose from the Baldock bakers, who catching him at an advantage, put out his eyes, and afterwards hanged him upon a knoll in Baldock field. At his death he made one request, which was, that he might have his bow and arrow put into his hand, and on shooting it off, where the arrow fell, they would bury him; which being granted, the arrow fell in Weston churchyard. Above seventy years ago, a very large thigh bone was taken out of the church chest, where it had lain many years for a show, and was sold by the clerk to Sir John Tradescant, who, it is said, put it among the rarities of Oxford. JACK PUDDING. The merry andrew, zany, or jester toa mountebank.

JACK ROBINSON.

Before one could say Jack Robinson; a saying to express a very short time, originating from a very volatile gentleman of that appellation, who would call on his neighbours, and be gone before his name could be announced.

JACK SPRAT. A dwarf, or diminutive fellow.

JACK TAR. A sailor.

JACK WEIGHT. A fat man.

JACK WHORE. A large masculine overgrown wench.
JACKANAPES. An ape; a pert, ugly, little fellow.
JACKED. Spavined. A jacked horse.

JACKMEN. See JARXMEN.

JACOB. A soft fellow.. A fool.

JACOB. A ladder: perhaps from Jacob's dream. Cant. Also the common name for a jay,jays being usually taught to say, Poor Jacob ! a cup of sack for Jacob,

JACOBITES. Sham or collar shirts. Also partizans for the Stuart family: from the name of the abdicated king, i. e. James or Jacobus. It is said by the whigs, that God changed Jacob's name to Israel, lest the descendants of that patriarch should be called Jacobites.

JADE. A term of reproach to women.
JAGUE. A ditch: perhaps from jakes.
JAIL BIRDS. Prisoners.

JAKES. A house of office, a cacatorium.

JAMMED. Hanged. Cant.

JANIZARIES. The mob, sometimes so called; also bailiffs,

their setters, and followers.

: JAPANNED.

JEW

JAPANNED. Ordained. To be japanned; to enter into holy orders, to become a clergyman, to put on the black cloth : from the colour of the japan ware, which is black.

JARK. A seal.

JARKMEN. Those who fabricate counterfeit passes, licences, and certificates for beggars.

JARVIS. A hackney coachman.

JASON'S FLEECE. A citizen cheated of his gold.

JAW. Speech, discourse. Give us none of your jaw; let us have none of your discourse. A jaw-me-dead; a talkative fellow. Jaw work; a cry used in fairs by the sellers of

nuts.

JAZEY. A bob wig.

IDEA Pot. The knowledge box, the head. See KNOWLEDGE Box.

JEFFY. It will be done in a jeffy; it will be none in a short space of time, in an instant.

JEHU. To drive jehu-like; to drive furiously: from a king of Israel of that name, who was a famous charioteer, and mentioned as such in the Bible.

JEM. A gold ring.
JEMMY FELLOW.

JEMMY. A crow.

Cant.

A smart spruce fellow.

This instrument is much used by housebreakers. Sometimes called Jemmy Rook. JENNY. An instrument for lifting up the grate or top of a show-glass, in order to rob it. Cant.

JERRYCUMMUMBLE. To shake, towzle, or tumble about. JERRY SNEAK. A henpecked husband: from a celebrated character in one of Mr. Foote's plays, representing a man governed by his wife.

JESSAMY. A smart jemmy fellow, a fopling.
JESUIT. See To BOX THE JESUIT.

JESUITICAL. Sly, evasive, equivocal. A jesuitical answer; an equivocal answer.

JET. A lawyer. Autem jet; a parson.

JEW. An over-reaching dealer, or hard, sharp fellow; an extortioner: the brokers formerly behind St. Clement's church in the Strand were called Jews by their brethren the taylors.

JEW. A tradesman who has no faith, i. e. will not give credit.

JEW BAIL. Insufficient bail: commonly Jews, who for a

sum of money will bail any action whatsoever, and justify, that is, swear to their sufficiency; but, when called on, are not to be found.

JEW'S EYE. That's worth a Jew's eye; a pleasant or agreeable sight; a saying taken from Shakespeare. JIBBER