All languages English Tiếng Việt
Where will you be? Anywhere UK & IrelandUnited StatesOnline slangBusiness jargon
Expressions you’ll hear in Britain and Ireland — distinctly British usage first, then widespread staples.
"to DROP an acquaintance," to relinquish a connexion, is very polite slang. DROPPING is distinguished from cutting by being done gradually and almost imperceptibly, whereas cutting has outward and visible signs which may be unpleasantly resented. To "DROP money" at any form of speculation or gambling, is to lose it.
To let fall, with design, a piece of gold or silver, in order to draw in and cheat the person who sees it picked up; the piece so dropped is called a dropt cog.
Persons who practice the fraud of dropping a ring or other article, and picking it up before the person intended to be defrauded, they pretend that the thing is very valuable to induce their gull to lend them money, or to purchase the article. See FAWNY RIG, and MONEY DROPPERS.
Synonymous with "cut it" or "cheese it." Probably from the signal given in the good old hanging days by the culprit, who used generally to drop a handkerchief when he was ready for the cart to be moved from under him.
A man's yard with a gonorrhoea.
A house, a lodging, a street; HAZARD-DRUM, a gambling-house; FLASH-DRUM, a house of ill-fame.
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.
A robber who first makes his victims insensible by drugs or violence, and then plunders them.
Legs; DRUMSTICK CASES, trousers. The leg of a fowl is generally called a DRUMSTICK.
Drunk as a wheel-barrow. Drunk as David's sow. See DAVID'S SOW.
The venereal disorder.
A smart repartee: also copulation without emission; in law Latin, siccus robertulus.
A sly humorous fellow.
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.
An antiquary. From Scott.
A picklock, or master-key. CANT.
To pay or give; "DUB UP," pay up.
Robbing houses by picking the locks.
Open the door. CANT.
A general agent.—Anglo-Indian.
A picker of locks. CANT.
The mouth or tongue; "mum your DUBBER," hold your tongue.
Or SCREW, a turnkey.—Old Cant.
—The Vulgar Tongue: comprising Two Glossaries of Slang, Cant, and Flash Words and Phrases used in London at the present day, 12mo. 1857.
Money.—Theatrical Slang.
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.
A bundle of bits of the "stickings" of beef sold for food to the London poor.—See FAGGOT.
The man who has the care of the poultry on board a ship of war.
A ticket of any kind. Generally applied to pawnbroker’s duplicates and raffle cards. Probably from DOCKET.
Trousers. Sea term. The expression most in use on land is "white DUCKS," i.e., white pantaloons or trousers.
to spend or waste money recklessly
A thundering rake, a buck of the first head, one extremely lewd.
Or DUDHEEN, a short tobacco-pipe. Common term in Ireland and the Irish quarters of London.
Clothes, or personal property. Gaelic, DUD; Ancient Cant; also Dutch.
To cheat, to sell spurious goods, often under pretence of their being stolen or smuggled.
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.
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.
False, counterfeit, worthless.
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.
Gin, a term amongst livery servants.
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.
A tall, awkward, ill-made fellow.
Walk, or talk, according to context.
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.
Or DOOKEY, a penny gaff, which see.
A stupid, sluggish fellow, one long going on an errand.
A woman's privities.
A venereal bubo in the groin.
Silenced, also soundly beaten.
To perplex, to beat soundly till not able to speak. Originally a cant word. Johnson cites the Spectator for the earliest use. Scotch, DUMBFOUNDER.
A knowing or acute person.
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."
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.
A deaf-and-dumb person; a clumsy, awkward fellow; any one unusually thick-witted.
A man who sells buttons.
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.
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.
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.
A stealer of cows and calves.
Flash Dictionary of the Cant Words, Queer Sayings, and Crack Terms now in use in Flash Cribb Society, 32mo, coloured print. 1820.