to track
To go. Track up the dancers; go up stairs. CANT.
English · UK & Ireland 1611
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Expressions you’ll hear in Britain and Ireland — distinctly British usage first, then widespread staples.
to transnear
To come up with any body.
to trapan
To inveigle, or ensnare.
to trig it
To play truant. To lay a man trigging; to knock him down.
to troll
To loiter or saunter about.
to tune
To beat: his father tuned him delightfully: perhaps from fetching a tune out of the person beaten, or from a comparison with the disagreeable sounds of instruments when tuning.
to tup
To have carnal knowledge of a woman.
to tweak
To pull: to tweak any one's nose.
to twig
To observe. Twig the cull, he is peery; observe the fellow, he is watching us. Also to disengage, snap asunder, or break off. To twig the darbies; to knock off the irons.
to twit
To reproach a person, or remind him of favours conferred.
to vamp
To pawn any thing. I'll vamp it, and tip you the cole: I'll pawn it, and give you the money. Also to refit, new dress, or rub up old hats, shoes or other wearing apparel; likewise to put new feet to old boots. Applied more particularly to a quack bookseller.
to vowel
A gamester who does not immediately pay his losings, is said to vowel the winner, by repeating the vowels I. O. U. or perhaps from giving his note for the money according to the Irish form, where the acknowledgment of the debt is expressed by the letters I. O. U. which, the sum and name of the debtor being added, is deemed a sufficient security among gentlemen.
to waddle
To go like a duck. To waddle out of Change alley as a lame duck; a term for one who has not been able to pay his gaming debts, called his differences, on the Stock Exchange, and therefore absents himself from it.
to wap
To copulate, to beat. If she wont wap for a winne, let her trine for a make; if she won't lie with a man for a penny, let her hang for a halfpenny. Mort wap-apace; a woman of experience, or very expert at the sport.
to weed
To take a part. The kiddey weeded the swell's screens; the youth took some of the gentleman's bank notes.
to well
To divide unfairly. To conceal part. A cant phrase used by thieves, where one of the party conceals some of the booty, instead of dividing it fairly amongst his confederates.
to whiddle
To tell or discover. He whiddles; he peaches. He whiddles the whole scrap; he discovers all he knows. The cull whiddled because they would not tip him a snack: the fellow peached because they would not give him a share, They whiddle beef, and we must brush; they cry out thieves, and we must make off. Cant.
to whip the cock
A piece of sport practised at wakes, horse-races, and fairs in Leicestershire: a cock being tied or fastened into a hat or basket, half a dozen carters blindfolded, and armed with their cart whips, are placed round it, who, after being turned thrice about, begin to whip the cock, which if any one strikes so as to make it cry out, it becomes his property; the joke is, that instead of whipping the cock they flog each other heartily.
to win
To steal. The cull has won a couple of rum glimsticks; the fellow has stolen a pair of fine candlesticks.
to wiredraw
To lengthen out or extend any book, letter, or discourse.
to wobble
To boil. Pot wobbler; one who boils a pot.
to yam
To eat or stuff heartily.
to yelp
To cry out. Yelper; a town cryer, also one apt to make great complaints on trifling occasions.
to yowl
To cry aloud, or howl.
to-do
(pronounced quickly, and as one word), a disturbance, trouble; "here’s a pretty TO-DO," here is an unpleasant difficulty. This exactly tallies with the French, AFFAIRE (à faire).—See Forby’s Vocabulary of East Anglia.
to-morrow come never
When two Sundays come together; never.
to-rights
Excellent, very well, or good.—Low London slang.
toad
Toad in a hole; meat baked or boiled in pye-crust. He or she sits like a toad on a chopping-block; a saying of any who sits ill on horseback. As much need of it as a toad of a side-pocket; said of a person who desires any thing for which he has no real occasion. As full of money as a toad is of feathers.
toad eater
A poor female relation, and humble companion, or reduced gentlewoman, in a great family, the standing butt, on whom all kinds of practical jokes are played off, and all ill humours vented. This appellation is derived from a mountebank's servant, on whom all experiments used to be made in public by the doctor, his master; among which was the eating of toads, formerly supposed poisonous.
toad-in-the-hole
A kind of pudding, consisting of small pieces of meat immersed in batter, and baked. Also, a term applied to perambulating advertising mediums. See SANDWICH.
toast
A health; also a beautiful woman whose health is often drank by men. The origin of this term (as it is said) was this: a beautiful lady bathing in a cold bath, one of her admirers out of gallantry drank some of the water: whereupon another of her lovers observed, he never drank in the morning, but he would kiss the toast, and immediately saluted the lady.
toasting-fork
A regulation sword, indicative of the general uselessness of that weapon.
tobacco
A plant, once in great estimation as a medicine:
toby
The road. The highwayman or swell robber was in old days said to be on the high TOBY, from the high or main road, while those meaner fellows, the footpad and the cutpurse, were but "low TOBY-MEN," from their frequenting the by-ways.
toby lay
The highway. High toby man; a highway-man. Low toby man; a footpad.
toddle
To walk away. The cove was touting, but stagging the traps he toddled; be was looking out, and feeing the officers he walked away.
toddy
Originally the juice of the cocoa tree, and afterwards rum, water, sugar, and nutmeg.
todge
Beat all to a todge: said of anything beat to mash.
toe
To kick. "I’ll TOE your backside." Common in London.
toff
A dandy, a swell of rank. Corruption probably of TUFT. See TOFT.
toffer
A well-dressed "gay" woman. One who deals with TOFFS.
tofsy-turvy
The top side the other way; i.e. the wrong side upwards; some explain it, the top side turf ways, turf being always laid the wrong side upwards.
toft
A showy individual, a swell, a person who, in a Yorkshireman’s vocabulary, would be termed "uppish." See TUFT.
tog
A coat. Latin, TOGA.—Ancient Cant.
toggery
Clothes, harness, domestic paraphernalia of any kind.
togs
Clothes. The swell is rum-togged. The gentleman is handsomely dressed.
togs
Clothes; "Sunday TOGS," best clothes. One of the oldest cant words—in use in the time of Henry VIII. See CANT.
toke
Dry bread. Sometimes used to denote a lump of anything.
token
The plague: also the venereal disease. She tipped him the token; she gave him a clap or pox.
toko for yam
A Roland for an Oliver. Possibly from a system of barter carried on between sailors and aborigines.
tol
Lot, stock, or share.
tol-lol
Or TOL-LOLLISH, tolerable, or tolerably.
toll-shop
A Yorkshire correspondent gives this word as denoting in that county a prison, and also the following verse of a song, popular at fairs in the East Riding:—
tolliban rig
A species of cheat carried on by a woman, assuming the character of a dumb and deaf conjuror.
tom
E.g., "after TOM," after the hour at which Big TOM of Christchurch rings. At its last stroke the gates are closed, and undergrads entering after have to pay an increasing sum for each hour up to twelve. To be out after that involves an interview with the Master.—Oxford University.
tom and jerry shop
A low drinking shop. Probably some allusion to Pierce Egan’s famous characters in his Life in London. Generally contracted to JERRY SHOP.
tom crib’s
Memorial to Congress, with a Preface, Notes, and Appendix by one of the Fancy [Tom Moore, the Poet], 12mo. 1819.
tom long
A tiresome story teller. It is coming by Tom Long, the carrier; said of any thing that has been long expected.
tom of bedlam
The same as Abram man.
tom t--dman
A night man, one who empties necessary houses.