Classically Vulgar

by Holly West

This post originally appeared on my own blog on December 11, 2009. I've updated it here to include a few more amusing terms.

I've collected a lot of great reference books in my research for the Mistress of Fortune series (it's set in 17th century London), but by far my favorite is A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Captain Francis Grose. First published in 1785, it is a collection of slang words from all corners of society.

Here are a few of the entertaining words and expressions found in this volume:

Bum fodder - Toilet paper

Beard splitter - A man given to "wenching"

Captain Queernabs - A shabby, ill-dressed fellow

Cast up one's accounts - To vomit

Dog's soup - Rain water

Fart catcher - A valet or footman, from his walking behind his master or mistress

Flogging Cully - One who hires girls to flog him on the posteriors, in order to procure an erection

Gobble Prick - A lustful woman

Hopper Arsed - One with large, projecting buttocks

Join Giblets - Said of a man and woman who co-habit as husband and wife without being married; also to copulate

Kettle Drums - A woman's breasts

Lazybones - An instrument like a pair of tongs, for old or very fat people, to take something from the ground without stooping

Mantrap - a woman's private parts

Marriage music - The squalling and crying of children

Nunnery - A whorehouse

Poisoned - Pregnant, big with child

Roast meat clothes - Sunday or holiday clothes

Queen Street - A man governed by his wife is said to live in Queen Street

Soul doctor - A parson

Stallion - A man kept by an old lady for "secret services."

Thingumbobs, Whirlygigs, Gingambobs - Testicles

Wap - To copulate

Wool gathering - Said to an absent-minded person, or one in reverie, as in "Your wits are gone a'wool gathering."

One thing that's also interesting about the dictionary is to see how many of the words we still use whose meanings are more or less the same as they were over 200 years ago. Expressions like elbow grease, gift of gab, hodge podge, hush money, quack, ragamuffin, white lie, and ship shape were all used during this time.

Personally, I'd like to see terms like bum fodder, Captain Queernabs, flogging cully, and dog's soup come back into common usage. Let's make that happen.