1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar TongueGrose, Francis
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1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Grose, Francis
English language -- Slang -- Dictionaries
LITTLE EASE. A small dark cell in Guildhall, London,
where disorderly apprentices are confined by the city
chamberlain: it is called Little Ease from its being so low
that a lad cannot stand upright in it.
LITTLE SNAKESMAN. A little boy who gets into a house
through the sink-hole, and then opens the door for his
accomplices: he is so called, from writhing and twisting
like a snake, in order to work himself through the narrow
passage.
LIVE LUMBER. A term used by sailors, to signify all landsmen
on board their ships.
LIVE STOCK. Lice or fleas.
LOAF. To be in bad loaf, to be in a disagreeable situation,
or in trouble.
LOB. A till in a tradesman's shop. To frisk a lob; to rob
a till. See FLASH PANNEY.
LOB. Going on the lob; going into a shop to get change
for gold, and secreting some of the change.
LOB'S POUND. A prison. Dr. Grey, in his notes on Hudibras,
explains it to allude to one Doctor Lob, a dissenting
preacher, who used to hold forth when conventicles were
prohibited, and had made himself a retreat by means of a
trap door at the bottom of his pulpit. Once being pursued
by the officers of justice, they followed him through
divers subterraneous passages, till they got into a dark
cell, from whence they could not find their way out, but
calling to some of their companions, swore they had got
into Lob's Pound.
LOBCOCK. A large relaxed penis: also a dull inanimate
fellow.
LOBKIN. A house to lie in: also a lodging.
LOBLOLLEY BOY. A nick name for the surgeon's servant
on board a man of war, sometimes for the surgeon himself:
from the water gruel prescribed to the sick, which is
called loblolley.
LOBONIAN SOCIETY. A society which met at Lob Hall, at
the King and Queen, Norton Falgate, by order of Lob the
great.
LOBSCOUSE. A dish much eaten at sea, composed of salt
beef, biscuit and onions, well peppered, and stewed
together.
LOBSTER. A nick name for a soldier, from the colour of his
clothes. To boil one's lobster, for a churchman to
become a soldier: lobsters, which are of a bluish black,
being made red by boiling. I will not make a lobster
kettle of my ****, a reply frequently made by the nymphs
of the Point at Portsmouth, when requested by a soldier
to grant him a favour.
LOCK. A scheme, a mode. I must fight that lock; I must
try that scheme.
LOCK. Character. He stood a queer lock; he bore but an
indifferent character. A lock is also a buyer of stolen
goods, as well as the receptacle for them.
LOCK HOSPITAL. An hospital for venereal patients.
LOCK UP HOUSE. A spunging house; a public house kept
by sheriff's officers, to which they convey the persons they
have arrested, where they practise every species of
imposition and extortion with impunity. Also houses kept
by agents or crimps, who enlist, or rather trepan, men to
serve the East India or African company as soldiers.
LOCKERAM-JAWED. Thin-faced, or lanthorn-jawed. See
LANTHORN JAWED.
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