The slang dictionary

by John Camden Hotten

“Money,” it has been well remarked, “the bare, simple word itself, has a sonorous, significant ring in its sound,” and might have sufficed, one would have imagined, for all ordinary purposes, excepting, of course, those demanded by direct reference to specific sums. But a vulgar or “fast” society has thought differently; and so we have the Slang synonyms—“beans,” “blunt” (i.e., specie,—not soft or rags, bank-notes), “brads,” “brass,” “bustle,” “coppers” (copper money, or mixed pence), “chink,” “chinkers,” “chips,” “corks,” “dibbs,” “dinarly,” “dimmock,” “dust,” “feathers,” “gent” (silver,—from argent), “haddock” (a purse of money), “horse nails,” “huckster,” “loaver,” “lour” (the oldest Cant term for money), “mopusses,” “needful,” “nobbings” (money collected in a hat by street-performers), “ochre” (gold), “pewter,” “palm oil,” “pieces,” “posh,” “queen’s pictures,” “quids,” “rags” (bank-notes), “ready,” or “ready gilt,” “redge” (gold), “rhino,” “rowdy,” “shiners” (sovereigns), “skin” (a purse of money), “stiff” (checks, or bills of acceptance), “stuff,” “stumpy,” “tin” (silver), “wedge” (silver), and “yellow-boys” (sovereigns);—just forty-three vulgar equivalents for the simple word money. So attentive is Slang speech to financial matters, that there are seven terms for bad, or “bogus,” coin (as our friends the Americans call it): a “case” is a counterfeit five-shilling piece; “half a case” represents half that sum; “grays” are halfpence made specially for unfair gambling purposes; “queer-soft” is counterfeit or lead coin; “schofel” refers to coated or spurious coin; “sheen” is bad money of any description; and “sinkers” bears the same and not inappropriate meaning. “Snide” is now the generic term for all bad money, whether coined or in notes; and “snide-pitching” or “schoful-tossing” is the term in use among the professors of that pursuit for what is more generally known as “smashing.” “Flying the kite,” or obtaining money on bills and promissory-notes, is closely connected with the allegorical expression of “raising the wind,” which is a well-known phrase for procuring money by immediate sale, pledging, or by a forced loan. In winter or in summer any elderly gentleman who may have prospered in life is pronounced “warm;” whilst an equivalent is immediately at hand in the phrase “his pockets are well lined,” or “he is well breeched.” Each separate piece of money has its own Slang term, and often half a score of synonyms. To begin with that extremely humble coin, a farthing: first we have “fadge,” then “fiddler;” then “gig,” and lastly “quartereen.” A halfpenny is a “brown” or a “madzer (pronounced ‘medzer’) saltee” (Cant), or a “mag,” or a “posh,” or a “rap,”—whence the popular phrase, “I don’t care a rap.” The useful and universal penny has for Slang equivalents a “copper,” a “saltee” (Cant), and a “winn.” Twopence is a “deuce,” and threepence is either “thrums” or “thrups.” “Thrums” has a special peculiarity; for while “thrums-buskin” represents threepence-halfpenny, the term “buskin” is not used in connexion with any other number of pence. Fourpence, or a groat, may in vulgar speech be termed a “bit,” a “flag,” or a “joey.” Sixpence is well represented in street talk, and some of the slangisms are very comical—for instance, “bandy,” “bender,” “cripple,” and “downer;” then we have “buck,” “fye-b’ck,” “half a hog,” “kick” (thus “two and a ‘kick,’” or 2s. 6d.), “lord of the manor,”[56] “pig,” “pot” (the price of a pot of ale—thus half-a-crown is a “five ‘pot’ piece”), “snid,” “sprat,” “sow’s baby,” “tanner,” “tester,” “tizzy,”—seventeen vulgar words to one coin. Sevenpence being an uncommon amount has only one Slang synonym, “setter.” The same remark applies to eightpence and ninepence, the former being only represented by “otter,” and the latter by the Cant phrase “nobba-saltee.” Tenpence is “dacha-saltee,” and elevenpence “dacha-one,”—both Cant expressions. It is noticeable that coined pieces, and sums which from their smallness or otherwise are mostly in use, receive a commensurate amount of attention from promoters of Slang. One shilling boasts eleven Slang equivalents; thus we have “beong,” “bob,” “breaky-leg,” “deener,” “gen” (from the back Slang), “hog,” “levy,” “peg,” “stag,” “teviss,” and “twelver.” One shilling and sixpence is a “kye,” now and then an “eighteener.” It is noticeable that so far the florin has escaped, and only receives the shilling titles with the required numeral adjective prefixed. Half-a-crown is known as an “alderman,” “half a bull,” “half a wheel,” “half a tusheroon,” and a “madza (medzer) caroon;” whilst a crown piece, or five shillings, may be called either a “bull,” a “caroon,” a “cartwheel,” or a “coachwheel,” or, more generally than either, a “wheel” or a “tusheroon.” The word “dollar” is in general use among costermongers and their customers, and signifies exactly five shillings. Any term representing this amount “takes in two,” and represents the half-crown by the addition of the usual prefix. The next advance in Slang money is ten shillings, or half-a-sovereign, which may be either pronounced as “half a bean,” “half a couter,” “a madza poona,” “half a quid,” or “half a thick ’un.” A sovereign, or twenty shillings, is a “bean,” “canary,” “couter,” “foont,” “goldfinch,” “James” (from Jacobus), “poona,” “portrait,” “quid,” “thick-un,” or “yellow-boy.” Guineas are nearly obsolete, yet the terms “neds” and “half neds” are still in use. Bank-notes are “flimsies,” “long-tailed ones,” or “soft.” A “fin,” or a “finnuf,” is a five-pound note. Twenty-five pounds is a “pony,” and a hundred a “century.” One hundred pounds (or any other “round sum”), quietly handed over as payment for services performed, is curiously termed “a ‘cool’ hundred.” Thus ends, with several necessary omissions, this long list of Slang terms for the coins of the realm which, for copiousness, it is not too much to say, is not equalled by any other vulgar or unauthorized language in Europe.

The antiquity of many of these Slang names is remarkable. “Winn” was the vulgar term for a penny in the days of Queen Elizabeth; and “tester,” a sixpence (formerly a shilling), was the correct name in the days of Henry VIII. The reader, too, will have remarked the frequency of animals’ names as Slang terms for money. Little, as a modern writer has remarked, do the persons using these phrases know of their remote and somewhat classical origin, which may, indeed, be traced to a period anterior to that when monarchs monopolized the surface of coined money with their own images and superscriptions. They are identical with the very name of money among the early Romans, which was pecunia, from pecus, a flock. The collections of coin-dealers amply show that the figure of a “hog” was anciently placed on a small silver coin; and that that of a “bull” decorated larger ones of the same metal. These coins were frequently deeply crossed on the reverse; this was for the convenience of easily breaking them into two or more pieces, should the bargain for which they were employed require it, and the parties making it had no smaller change handy to complete the transaction. Thus we find that the “half bull” of the itinerant street-seller, or “traveller,” so far from being a phrase of modern invention, as is generally supposed, is in point of fact referable to an era extremely remote. This remark will safely apply to most descriptions of money; and it must not be forgotten that farthing is but a corruption of fourthing, or, literally, fourth part of a penny. The representative coin of the realm was often in olden times made to break up,—but this by the way. It is a reminder, however, that the word “smash,” as used by the classes that speak Slang from motives other than those of affectation, has nothing whatever to do with base coin, as is generally supposed. It simply means to give change. Thus:—“Can you smash a thick ’un for me?” means simply, “Can you give me change for a sovereign?” We learn from Erizzo, in his Discorso, a further illustration of the proverb “that there is nothing new under the sun;” for he says that the Roman boys at the time of Hadrian tossed up their coppers and cried, “Head or ship;” of which tradition our “heads or tails,” and “man or woman,” or “a tanner I heads ’em,” is certainly a less refined version. We thence gather, however, that the prow of a vessel would appear to have been the more ordinary device of the reverse of the brass coin of that ancient period. There are many other Cant words directly from a classic source, as will be seen in the dictionary.

Shopkeepers’ Slang is perhaps the most offensive of all Slang, though this is not intended to imply that shopkeepers are perhaps the most offensive of people. This kind of Slang is not a casual eyesore, as newspaper Slang, neither is it an occasional discomfort to the ear, as in the case of some vulgar byword of the street; but it is a perpetual nuisance, and stares you in the face on tradesmen’s invoices, on labels in the shop-windows, and placards on the hoardings, in posters against the house next to your own—if it happen to be empty for a few weeks—and in bills thrust into your hand, as you peaceably walk through the streets. Under your door, and down your area, Slang handbills are dropped by some “pushing” tradesman; and for the thousandth time you are called upon to learn that an “alarming sacrifice” is taking place in the next street; that prices are “down again;” that, in consequence of some other tradesman not “driving a roaring trade,” being in fact, “sold up,” and for the time being a resident in “Burdon’s Hotel” (Whitecross-Street Prison), the “pushing” tradesman wishes to sell out at “awfully low prices,” to “the kind patrons, and numerous customers,” &c. &c., “that have on every occasion,” &c. &c. These are, though, very venial offenders compared with those ghouls, the advertising undertakers, who employ boys, loaded with ghastly little books, to follow up the parish doctor, and leave their horrible wares wherever he calls. But what can be expected of ignorant undertakers when a London newspaper of large circulation actually takes out the death records from the Times, and sends a circular to each address therein, informing the bereaved persons that the “——” charges so much per line for similar notices, and that its circulation is most extensive? Surely the typical “death-hunter,” hardened though he may be, is hardly down to that level. In shopkeeping Slang any occupation or calling is termed a “line,”—thus, the “building line.” A tailor usurps to himself a good deal of Slang. Amongst operatives he is called a “snip,” a “steel-bar driver,” a “cabbage contractor,” or a “goose persuader;” by the world, a “ninth part of a man;” and by the young collegian, or “fast” man, a “sufferer.” If he takes army contracts, it is “sank work;” if he is a “slop” tailor, he is a “springer up,” and his garments are “blown together.” Perquisites with him are “spiffs,” and remnants of cloth “peaking, or cabbage.” The per-centage he allows to his assistants (or “counter jumpers”) on the sale of old-fashioned articles is termed “tinge.” If he pays his workmen in goods, or gives them tickets upon other tradesmen, with whom he shares the profit, he is soon known as a “tommy master.” If his business succeeds, it “takes;” if neglected, it becomes “shaky,” and “goes to pot;” if he is deceived by a debtor (a by no means unusual circumstance), he is “let in,” or, as it is sometimes varied, “taken in.” It need scarcely be remarked that any credit he may give is termed “tick.”

Operatives’ or workmen’s Slang, in quality, is but slightly removed from tradesmen’s Slang. When belonging to the same shop or factory, they “graft” there, and are “brother chips.” Among printers the favourite term is “comps,”—not compositors, though the same contraction is used for that word,—but companions, whether so in actual fact, or as members of the same “companionship.” A companionship is the number of men engaged on any one work, and this is in turn reduced to “ship:” sometimes it is a “’stab ship,” i.e., paid by the week, therefore on the establishment; sometimes it is “on the piece,” and anyhow it is an extremely critical organization, so perhaps it would be better to broaden the subject. Workmen generally dine at “slap-bang shops,” and are often paid at “tommy shops.” At the nearest “pub,” or public-house, they generally have a “score chalked up” against them, which has to be “wiped off” regularly on the Saturday night. This is often known as a “light.” When credit is bad the “light” is said to be out. When out of work, they describe themselves as being “out of collar.” They term each other “flints” and “dungs,” if they are “society” or “non-society” men. Their salary is a “screw,” and to be discharged is to “get the sack,” varied by the expression “get the bullet,” the connexion of which with discharge is obvious, as the small lecturers—those at the Polytechnic for instance—say, to the meanest capacity. When they quit work, they “knock off;” and when out of employ, they ask if any “hands” are, or any assistance is, wanted. “Fat” is the vulgar synonym for perquisites; “elbow grease” signifies labour; and “Saint Monday” is the favourite day of the week. Names of animals figure plentifully in the workman’s vocabulary; thus we have “goose,” a tailor’s smoothing-iron; “sheep’s-foot,” an iron hammer; “sow,” a receptacle for molten iron, whilst the metal poured from it is termed “pig.” Many of the Slang terms for money may have originally come from the workshop, thus—“brads,” from the ironmonger; “chips,” from the carpenter; “dust,” from the goldsmith; “feathers,” from the upholsterer; “horse-nails,” from the farrier; “haddock,” from the fishmonger; and “tanner and skin” from the leather-dresser.

If society, as has been remarked, is a sham, from the vulgar foundation of commonalty to the crowning summit of royalty, then do we perceive the justness of the remark in that most peculiar of peculiarities, the Slang of makeshifts for oaths, and sham exclamations for passion and temper. These apologies for feeling are an addition to our vernacular, and though some argue that they are a disgrace, for the reason that no man should pretend to swear or curse who does not do so, it is some satisfaction to know that they serve the purpose of reducing the stock of national profanity. “You be blowed,” or “I’ll be blowed if,” &c., is an exclamation often heard in the streets. “Blazes,” or “like blazes,” came probably from the army, unless, indeed, it came from the original metaphor, afterwards corrupted, to serve all turns, “to smoke like blazes.” “Blast,” too, although in general vulgar use, may have had an engineering or military origin, and the phrase, “I wish I may be shot, if,” smacks much of powder. “Blow me tight” is a very windy and common exclamation. The same may be said of “strike me lucky,” “never trust me,” and “so help me Davy;” the latter being evidently derived from the truer old phrase, “I’ll take my Davy on’t”—i.e., my affidavit, “Davy,” and sometimes “Alfred Davy,” being a corruption of that word. “By Golly,” “Gol darn it,” and “so help”—generally pronounced “selp” or “swelp”—“me Bob,” are evident shams for profane oaths. “Tarnation” is but a softening of damnation; and “od,” whether used in “od drat it,” or “od’s blood,” is but an apology for the name of the Deity. “Marry,” a term of asseveration in common use, was originally, in Popish times, a mode of swearing by the Virgin Mary;—so also “marrow-bones,” for the knees. “I’ll bring him down upon his marrow-bones,”—i.e., I’ll make him bend his knees as he does to the Virgin Mary. The Irish phrase, “Bad scran to yer!” is equivalent to wishing a person bad food. “I’m sniggered if you will,” and “I’m jiggered,” are other mild forms of swearing among men fearful of committing an open profanity, yet slily nibbling at the sin. Maybe, some day one of these adventurers will meet with the object of his desires, and then when fairly “jiggered,” whatever it may ultimately turn out to be, it is to be hoped he will prove a fearful example to all persons with the will, but not the pluck, to swear fierce oaths. Both “deuce” and “dickens” are vulgar old synonyms for the devil; and “zounds” is an abbreviation of “God’s wounds,”—a very ancient oath.

In a casual survey of the territory of Slang, it is curious to observe how well represented are the familiar wants and failings of life. First, there is money, with one hundred and odd Slang terms and synonyms; then comes drink, from small beer to champagne; and next as a very natural sequence, intoxication, and fuddlement generally, with some half a hundred vulgar terms, graduating the scale of drunkenness, from a slight inebriation to the soaky state which leads to the gutter, sometimes to the stretcher, the station-house, the fine, and, most terrible of all, the “caution.” The Slang synonyms for mild intoxication are certainly very choice,—they are “beery,” “bemused,” “boozy,” “bosky,” “buffy,” “corned,” “foggy,” “fou,” “fresh,” “hazy,” “elevated,” “kisky,” “lushy,” “moony,” “muggy,” “muzzy,” “on,” “screwed,” “stewed,” “tight,” and “winey.” A higher or more intense state of beastliness is represented by the expressions, “podgy,” “beargered,” “blued,” “cut,” “primed,” “lumpy,” “ploughed,” “muddled,” “obfuscated,” “swipey,” “three sheets in the wind,” and “top-heavy.” But the climax of fuddlement is only obtained when the “disguised” individual “can’t see a hole in a ladder,” or when he is all “mops and brooms,” or “off his nut,” or with his “main-brace well spliced,” or with the “sun in his eyes,” or when he has “lapped the gutter,” and got the “gravel rash,” or is on the “ran-tan,” or on the “ree-raw,” or when “sewed up,” and regularly “scammered,”—then, and not till then, is he entitled, in vulgar society, to the title of “lushington,” or recommended to “put in the pin,” i.e., the linch-pin, to keep his legs steady.

THE
SLANG DICTIONARY.

A 1, first-rate, the very best; “she’s a prime girl, she is; she is A 1.”—Sam Slick. The highest classification of ships at Lloyd’s; common term in the United States; also at Liverpool and other English seaports. Another, even more intensitive form is “first-class, letter A, No. 1.” Some people choose to say A I, for no reason, however, beyond that of being different from others.

Abigail, a lady’s-maid; perhaps obtained from old comedies. Used in an uncomplimentary sense. Some think the term is derived from Abigail Hill (Mrs. Masham), lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne, and a typical ABIGAIL in the way of intrigue.