A Dictionary of Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words / Used at the Present Day in the Streets of London; the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; the Houses of Parliament; the Dens of St. Giles; and the Palaces of St. James.

by John Camden Hotten

FLY THE KITE, or RAISE THE WIND, to obtain money on bills, whether good or bad, alluding to tossing paper about like children do a kite.

FLY THE KITE, to evacuate from a window,—term used in padding kens, or low lodging houses.

FLYING-MESS, “to be in FLYING MESS” is a soldier’s phrase for being hungry and having to mess where he can.—Military.

FLYING STATIONERS, paper workers, hawkers of penny ballads; “Printed for the Flying Stationers” is the imprimatur on hundreds of penny histories and sheet songs of the last and present centuries.

FLYMY, knowing, cunning, roguish.

FOALED, “thrown from a horse.”—Hunting term.—See [PURLED], and [SPILT].

FOGEY, or OLD FOGEY, a dullard, an old-fashioned or singular person. Grose says it is a nickname for an invalid soldier, from the French, FOURGEAUX, fierce or fiery, but it has lost this signification now. Fogger, old word for a huckster or servant.

FOGGY, tipsy.

FOGLE, a silk handkerchief—not a CLOUT, which is of cotton. It has been hinted that this may have come from the German, VOGEL, a bird, from the bird’s eye spots on some handkerchiefs [see BIRD’S-EYE-WIPE, under [BILLY]], but a more probable derivation is the Italian slang (Fourbesque) FOGLIA, a pocket, or purse; or from the French argot, FOUILLE, also a pocket.

FOGUS, tobacco.—Old cant. Fogo, old word for stench.