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

ROWDY, money. In America, a ruffian, a brawler, “rough.”

ROWDY-DOW, low, vulgar; “not the CHEESE,” or thing.

RUB, a quarrel, or impediment: “there’s the RUB,” i.e., that is the difficulty.—Shakespere and L’Estrange.

RUBBER, a term at whist, &c., two games out of three.—Old, 1677.

RUCK, the undistinguished crowd; “to come in with the RUCK,” to arrive at the winning post among the non-winning horses.—Racing term.

RUGGY, fusty, frowsy.

RUM, like its opposite, QUEER, was formerly a much used prefix, signifying, fine, good, gallant, or valuable, perhaps in some way connected with ROME. Now-a-days it means indifferent, bad, or questionable, and we often hear even persons in polite society use such a phrase as “what a RUM fellow he is, to be sure,” in speaking of a man of singular habits or appearance. The term, from its frequent use, long since claimed a place in our dictionaries; but, with the exception of Johnson, who says RUM, a cant word for a clergyman (?), no lexicographer has deigned to notice it.

“Thus RUMLY floor’d, the kind Acestes ran,

And pitying, rais’d from earth the game old man.”

Virgil’s Æneid, book v., Translation by Thomas Moore.