VILLE, or VILE, a town or village.—pronounced phial, or vial.—French.
VINNIED, mildewed, or sour.—Devonshire.
VOKER, to talk; “can you VOKER Romany?” can you speak the canting language.—Latin, VOCARE; Spanish, VOCEAR.
WABBLE, to move from side to side, to roll about. Johnson terms it a “low, barbarous word.”
WALKER! or HOOKEY WALKER! an ejaculation of incredulity, said when a person is telling a story which you know to be all gammon, or false. The Saturday Reviewer’s explanation of the phrase is this:—“Years ago, there was a person named Walker, an aquiline-nosed Jew, who exhibited an orrery, which he called by the erudite name of Eidouranion. He was also a popular lecturer on astronomy, and often invited his pupils, telescope in hand, to take a sight at the moon and stars. The lecturer’s phrase struck his school-boy auditory, who frequently “took a sight” with that gesture of outstretched arm, and adjustment to nose and eye, which was the first garnish of the popular saying. The next step was to assume phrase and gesture as the outward and visible mode of knowingness in general.” A correspondent, however, denies this, and states that HOOKEY WALKER was a magistrate of dreaded acuteness and incredulity, whose hooked nose gave the title of BEAK to all his successors; and, moreover, that the gesture of applying the thumb to the nose and agitating the little finger, as an expression of “Don’t you wish you may get it?” is considerably older than the story in the Saturday Review would seem to indicate. There is a third explanation of HOOKEY WALKER in Notes and Queries, iv., 425.
WALK INTO, to overcome, to demolish; “I’ll WALK INTO his affections” i.e., I will scold or thrash him. The word [DRIVE] (which see) is used in an equally curious sense in slang speech.
WALK OVER, a re-election without opposition.—Parliamentary, but derived from the Turf, where a horse—which has no rivals entered—WALKS OVER the course, and wins without exertion.
WALK-THE-BARBER,
to lead a girl astray.
WALK YOUR CHALKS, be off, or run away,—spoken sharply by any one who wishes to get rid of you.—See [CHALKS].