ditty-bag
The bag or huswife in which sailors keep needles, thread, buttons, &c., for mending their clothes.
English · UK & Ireland 846
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Expressions you’ll hear in Britain and Ireland — distinctly British usage first, then widespread staples.
dive
To dive; to pick a pocket. To dive for a dinner; to go down into a cellar to dinner. A dive, is a thief who stands ready to receive goods thrown out to him by a little boy put in at a window. Cant.
diver
A pickpocket; also one who lives in a cellar.
diver
A pickpocket. Also applied to fingers, no doubt from a similar reason. To DIVE is to pick pockets.
divide
To divide the house with one's wife; to give her the outside, and to keep all the inside to one's self, i.e. to turn her into the street.
do
To do any one; to rob and cheat him. I have done him; I have robbed him. Also to overcome in a boxing match: witness those laconic lines written on the field of battle, by Humphreys to his patron.--'Sir, I have done the Jew.'
do the high
To walk up and down High Street on Sunday evenings, especially just after Church.—Oxford University.
dobie
An Indian washerman; and though women wash clothes in this country, Anglo-Indians speak of a washerwoman as a DOBIE.
dobin rig
Stealing ribbands from haberdashers early in the morning or late at night; generally practised by women in the disguise of maid servants.
doctor
Milk and water, with a little rum, and some nutmeg; also the name of a composition used by distillers, to make spirits appear stronger than they really are, or, in their phrase, better proof.
doctor
To adulterate or drug liquor; to poison, to hocus; also to falsify accounts. A publican who sells bad liquors is said to keep the DOCTOR in his cellars. On board ship the cook is always termed "the DOCTOR."—See COOK.
doctors
Loaded dice, that will run but two or three chances. They put the doctors upon him; they cheated him with loaded dice.
doddy
A term applied in Norfolk to any person of low stature. Sometimes HODMANDOD and "HODDY-DODDY, all head and no body." DODMAN in the same dialect denotes a garden snail.
dodge
A cunning trick. "DODGE, that homely but expressive phrase."—Sir Hugh Cairns on the Reform Bill, 2nd March, 1859. Anglo-Saxon, DEOGIAN, to colour, to conceal. The TIDY DODGE, as it is called by street-folk, consists in dressing up a family clean and tidy, and parading in the streets to excite compassion and obtain alms.
dodger
A dram. In Kent, a DODGER signifies a nightcap; which name is often given to the last dram at night.
dodsey
A woman: perhaps a corruption of Doxey. CANT.
dog
An old dog at it; expert or accustomed to any thing. Dog in a manger; one who would prevent another from enjoying what he himself does not want: an allusion to the well-known fable. The dogs have not dined; a common saying to any one whose shirt hangs out behind. To dog, or dodge; to follow at a distance. To blush like a blue dog, i.e. not at all.
dog buffers
Dog stealers, who kill those dogs not advertised for, sell their skins, and feed the remaining dogs with their flesh.
dog cheap
Or DOG-FOOLISH, very or singularly cheap, or foolish. Latham, in his English Language, says:—"This has nothing to do with dogs. The first syllable is god = good, transposed, and the second, the ch‑‑p, is chapman, merchant: compare EASTCHEAP."—Old term.
dog gone
A form of mild swearing used by boys.
dog in a doublet
A daring, resolute fellow. In Germany and Flanders the boldest dogs used to hunt the boar, having a kind of buff doublet buttoned on their bodies, Rubens has represented several so equipped, so has Sneyders.
dog in the manger
Someone who prevents others from having something they themselves do not want.
dog latin
Barbarous Latin, such as was formerly used by the lawyers in their pleadings.
dog stealer
A DOG DEALER. There is sometimes less difference between the two trades than between "d" and "st."
dog vane
A cockade. SEA TERM.
dog's portion
A lick and a smell. He comes in for only a dog's portion; a saying of one who is a distant admirer or dangler after women. See DANGLER.
dog's rig
To copulate till you are tired, and then turn tail to it.
dogberry
A foolish constable.—Shakspeare.
doggery
Nonsense, transparent attempts to cheat.
dogs
TO GO TO THE, to be commercially or socially ruined. Originally a stable term applied to old or worthless horses, sold to feed hounds.
dog’s ears
The curled corners of the leaves of books, which have been carelessly treated. The use of this term is so common that it is hardly to be considered slang.
dog’s nose
Gin and beer, so called from the mixture being cold, like a dog’s nose.
doing time
Working out a sentence in prison. "He’s done time," is a slang phrase used in reference to a man who is known to have been in gaol.
doldrums
Difficulties, low spirits, dumps.—Sea.
doll
Bartholomew doll; a tawdry, over-drest woman, like one of the children's dolls at Bartholomew fair. To mill doll; to beat hemp at Bridewell, or any other house of correction.
dollop
A lump or portion.—Norfolk. Anglo-Saxon, DALE, dole.
dolly
A Yorkshire dolly; a contrivance for washing, by means of a kind of wheel fixed in a tub, which being turned about, agitates and cleanses the linen put into it, with soap and water.
dolly
A very mild gambling contrivance, generally used in sweetmeat and other child’s-ware shops, until stopped by the authorities a few years back, and consisting of a round board and the figure of an old man or "DOLLY," down which was a spiral hole. A marble dropped "down the DOLLY," would stop in one of the small holes or pits (numbered) on the board. The bet was decided according as the marble stopped on a high or low figure. See DOLLY-SHOP.
dollymop
A tawdrily-dressed maid-servant, a semi-professional street-walker.
domine do little
An impotent old fellow.
domineer
To reprove or command in an insolent or haughty manner. Don't think as how you shall domineer here.
dominie
A parson, or master at a grammar school.
domino
A common ejaculation of soldiers and sailors when they receive the last lash of a flogging. The allusion may be understood from the game of dominoes. A DOMINO means either a blow, or the last of a series of things, whether pleasant or otherwise, so the ejaculation savours somewhat of wit.
dommerer
A beggar pretending that his tongue has been cutout by the Algerines, or cruel and blood-thirsty Turks, or else that he yas born deaf and dumb. Cant.
don
A clever fellow, the opposite of a muff; a person of distinction in his line or walk. At the English Universities, the Masters and Fellows are the DONS. DON is also used as an adjective, "a DON hand at a knife and fork," i.e., a first-rate feeder at a dinner-table.
don pedro
A game at cards. It is a compound of All Fours, and the Irish game variously termed All Fives, Five and Ten, Fifteen, Forty-five, &c. It was probably invented by the mixed English and Irish rabble who fought in Portugal in 1832-3.
dona and feeles
A woman and children. Italian or Lingua Franca, DONNE E FIGLIE. The word DONA is usually pronounced DONER.
done up
Ruined by gaming and extravagances. Modern Term.
done up
An equivalent expression to "dead beat."
done!
The expression used when a bet is accepted. To be DONE, is to be considerably worsted.—See also DO.
donkey
"tuppence more and up goes the DONKEY," a vulgar street phrase for extracting as much money as possible before performing any task. The phrase had its origin with a travelling showman, the finale of whose performance was the hoisting of a DONKEY on a pole or ladder; but this consummation was never arrived at unless the required amount was first paid up, and "tuppence more" was generally the sum demanded.
donkey, donkey dick
A he, or jack ass: called donkey, perhaps, from the Spanish or don-like gravity of that animal, intitled also the king of Spain's trumpeter.
doodle
A silly fellow, or noodle: see NOODLE. Also a child's penis. Doodle doo, or Cock a doodle doo; a childish appellation for a cock, in imitation of its note when crowing.
doodle sack
A bagpipe. Dutch.--Also the private parts of a woman.
doogheno
Literally "good-one," but implying generally a good market, a good man, &c.
doogheno hit
One good hit. A coster remarks to a mate, "Jack made a DOOGHENO HIT this morning," implying that he did well at market, or sold out with good profit. Actually a good hit only is intended, but redundancy has its charms in the back slang as well as in more pretentious literary efforts.
dookin
Fortune-telling. Gipsy, DUKKERIN.
dose
Three months’ imprisonment with hard labour.
doss
A bed. Probably from DOZE, though quite as likely from DORSE, the back. Least likely of all, as any one who knows aught about the surrounding circumstances of those who use the term will admit, is it from the Norman, DOSSEL, a hanging or bed canopy, from which some have professed to derive it.
dot and go one
To waddle: generally applied to persons who have one leg shorter than the other, and who, as the sea phrase is, go upon an uneven keel. Also a jeering appellation for an inferior writing-master, or teacher of arithmetic.