drum
A house, a lodging, a street; HAZARD-DRUM, a gambling-house; FLASH-DRUM, a house of ill-fame.
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Expressions you’ll hear in Britain and Ireland — distinctly British usage first, then widespread staples.
drummer
A jockey term for a horse that throws about his fore legs irregularly: the idea is taken from a kettle drummer, who in beating makes many flourishes with his drumsticks.
drummer
A robber who first makes his victims insensible by drugs or violence, and then plunders them.
drumsticks
Legs; DRUMSTICK CASES, trousers. The leg of a fowl is generally called a DRUMSTICK.
drunk
Drunk as a wheel-barrow. Drunk as David's sow. See DAVID'S SOW.
drury lane ague
The venereal disorder.
dry bob
A smart repartee: also copulation without emission; in law Latin, siccus robertulus.
dry boots
A sly humorous fellow.
dry lodging
Sleeping and sitting accommodation only, without board. This is lodging-house keepers’ slang, and is generally used in reference to rooms let to lodgers who take their meals at their clubs, or in the City, according to their social positions.
dryasdust
An antiquary. From Scott.
dub
A picklock, or master-key. CANT.
dub
To pay or give; "DUB UP," pay up.
dub lay
Robbing houses by picking the locks.
dub the jigger
Open the door. CANT.
dubash
A general agent.—Anglo-Indian.
dubber
A picker of locks. CANT.
dubber
The mouth or tongue; "mum your DUBBER," hold your tongue.
dubsman
Or SCREW, a turnkey.—Old Cant.
ducange anglicus
—The Vulgar Tongue: comprising Two Glossaries of Slang, Cant, and Flash Words and Phrases used in London at the present day, 12mo. 1857.
ducats
Money.—Theatrical Slang.
duck
A lame duck; an Exchange-alley phrase for a stock-jobber, who either cannot or will not pay his losses, or, differences, in which case he is said to WADDLE OUT OF THE ALLEY, as he cannot appear there again till his debts are settled and paid; should he attempt it, he would be hustled out by the fraternity.
duck
A bundle of bits of the "stickings" of beef sold for food to the London poor.—See FAGGOT.
duck f-ck-r
The man who has the care of the poultry on board a ship of war.
ducket
A ticket of any kind. Generally applied to pawnbroker’s duplicates and raffle cards. Probably from DOCKET.
ducks
Trousers. Sea term. The expression most in use on land is "white DUCKS," i.e., white pantaloons or trousers.
ducks and drakes
to spend or waste money recklessly
duddering rake
A thundering rake, a buck of the first head, one extremely lewd.
dudeen
Or DUDHEEN, a short tobacco-pipe. Common term in Ireland and the Irish quarters of London.
duds
Clothes, or personal property. Gaelic, DUD; Ancient Cant; also Dutch.
duff
To cheat, to sell spurious goods, often under pretence of their being stolen or smuggled.
duffer
A hawker of "Brummagem" or sham jewellery, or of shams of any kind, a fool, a worthless person. DUFFER was formerly synonymous with DUDDER, and was a general term given to pedlars. It is mentioned in the Frauds of London (1760) as a word in frequent use in the last century to express cheats of all kinds.
duffers
Cheats who ply in different parts of the town, particularly about Water-lane, opposite St. Clement's church, in the Strand, and pretend to deal in smuggled goods, stopping all country people, or such as they think they can impose on; which they frequently do, by selling them Spital-fields goods at double their current price.
duffing
False, counterfeit, worthless.
duffy
A term for a ghost or spirit among the West Indian negroes. In all probability the DAVY JONES of sailors, and a contraction thereof originally.
duke
Gin, a term amongst livery servants.
duke humphrey
To dine with Duke Humphrey; to fast. In old St. Paul's church was an aisle called Duke Humphrey's walk (from a tomb vulgarly called his, but in reality belonging to John of Gaunt), and persons who walked there, while others were at dinner, were said to dine with Duke Humphrey.
duke of limbs
A tall, awkward, ill-made fellow.
duke of york
Walk, or talk, according to context.
dukes
Or DOOKS, the hands, originally modification of the rhyming slang, "Duke of Yorks," forks = fingers, hands—a long way round, but quite true. The word is in very common use among low folk. "Put up your DOOKS" is a kind invitation to fight.
dukey
Or DOOKEY, a penny gaff, which see.
dull swift
A stupid, sluggish fellow, one long going on an errand.
dumb glutton
A woman's privities.
dumb watch
A venereal bubo in the groin.
dumb-founded
Silenced, also soundly beaten.
dumbfound
To perplex, to beat soundly till not able to speak. Originally a cant word. Johnson cites the Spectator for the earliest use. Scotch, DUMBFOUNDER.
dummacker
A knowing or acute person.
dummee
A pocket book. A dummee hunter. A pick-pocket, who lurks about to steal pocket books out of gentlemen's pockets. Frisk the dummee of the screens; take all the bank notes out of the pocket book, ding the dummee, and bolt, they sing out beef. Throw away the pocket book, and run off, as they call out "stop thief."
dummies
Empty bottles, and drawers in an apothecary’s shop, labelled so as to give the idea of an extensive stock. Chandlers’ shop keepers and small general dealers use dummies largely, half-tubs of butter, bladders of lard, hams, cheeses, &c., being specially manufactured for them. Dummies in libraries generally take the form of "Hume and Smollett’s History of England" and other works not likely to tempt the general reader.
dummy
A deaf-and-dumb person; a clumsy, awkward fellow; any one unusually thick-witted.
dump fencer
A man who sells buttons.
dumplin
A short thick man or woman. Norfolk dumplin; a jeering appellation of a Norfolk man, dumplins being a favourite kind of food in that county.
dumps
Down in the dumps; low-spirited, melancholy: jocularly said to be derived from Dumpos, a king of Egypt, who died of melancholy. Dumps are also small pieces of lead, cast by schoolboys in the shape of money.
dun
To solicit payment.—Old Cant, from the French DONNEZ, give; or from JOE DIN, or DUN, a famous bailiff; or simply a corruption of DIN, from the Anglo-Saxon DUNAN, to clamour.
dunaker
A stealer of cows and calves.
duncombe’s
Flash Dictionary of the Cant Words, Queer Sayings, and Crack Terms now in use in Flash Cribb Society, 32mo, coloured print. 1820.
dunegan
A privy. A water closet.
dung
An operative who works for an employer who does not give full or "society" wages.
dungaree
Low, common, coarse, vulgar.—Anglo-Indian. DUNGAREE is the name of a disreputable suburb of Bombay, and also of a coarse blue cloth worn by sailors.
dunghill
A coward: a cockpit phrase, all but gamecocks being styled dunghills. To die dunghill; to repent, or shew any signs of contrition at the gallows. Moving dunghill; a dirty, filthy man or woman. Dung, an abbreviation of dunghill, also means a journeyman taylor who submits to the law for regulating journeymen taylors' wages, therefore deemed by the flints a coward. See FLINTS.
dunkhorned
Sneaking, shabby. DUNKHORN in Norfolk is the short, blunt horn of a beast, and the adjective is applied to a cuckold who has not spirit to resist his disgrace.