1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar TongueGrose, Francis
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1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Grose, Francis
English language -- Slang -- Dictionaries
HUM DURGEON. An imaginary illness. He has got the
humdurgeon, the thickest part of his thigh is nearest his a-se;
i.e. nothing ails him except low spirits.
HUMBUGS. The brethren of the venerable society of humbugs
was held at brother Hallam's, in Goodman's Fields.
HUMMER. A great lye, a rapper. See RAPPER.
HUMMING LIQUOR. Double ale, stout pharaoh. See PHARAOH.
HUMMUMS. A bagnio, or bathing house.
HUM TRUM. A musical instrument made of a mopstick, a
bladder, and some packthread, thence also called a bladder
and string, and hurdy gurdy; it is played on like a violin,
which is sometimes ludicrously called a humstrum; sometimes,
instead of a bladder, a tin canister is used.
HUMP. To hump; once a fashionable word for copulation.
HUMPTY DUMPTY. A little humpty dumpty man or woman;
a short clumsy person of either sex: also ale boiled
with brandy.
TO HUNCH. To jostle, or thrust.
HUNCH-BACKED. Hump-backed.
HUNG BEEF. A dried bull's pizzle. How the dubber
served the cull with hung beef; how the turnkey beat the
fellow with a bull's pizzle.
HUNKS. A covetous miserable fellow, a miser; also the
name of a famous bear mentioned by Ben Jonson.
HUNT'S DOG. He is like Hunt's dog, will neither go to
church nor stay at home. One Hunt, a labouring man at
a small town in Shropshire, kept a mastiff, who on being
shut up on Sundays, whilst his master went to church,
howled so terribly as to disturb the whole village; wherefore
his master resolved to take him to church with him:
but when he came to the church door, the dog having perhaps
formerly been whipped out by the sexton, refused to
enter; whereupon Hunt exclaimed loudly against his dog's
obstinacy, who would neither go to church nor stay at
home. This shortly became a bye-word for discontented
and whimsical persons.
HUNTING. Drawing in unwary persons to play or game.
CANT.
HUNTING THE SQUIRREL. An amusement practised by
postboys and stage-coachmen, which consists in following
a one-horse chaise, and driving it before them, passing close
to it, so as to brush the wheel, and by other means terrifying
any woman or person that may be in it. A man whose
turn comes for him to drink, before he has emptied his former
glass, is said to be hunted.
HUNTSUP. The reveillier of huntsmen, sounded on the
French horn, or other instrument.
HURDY GURDY. A kind of fiddle, originally made perhaps
out of a gourd. See HUMSTRUM.
HURLY BURLY. A rout, riot, bustle or confusion.
HUSH. Hush the cull; murder the fellow.
HUSH MONEY. Money given to hush up or conceal a robbery, theft,
or any other offence, or to take off the evidence
from appearing against a criminal.
HUSKYLOUR. A guinea, or job. Cant.
HUSSY. An abbreviation of housewife, but now always
used as a term of reproach; as, How now, hussy? or She
is a light hussy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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