Slang and its analogues past and present, volume 3 [of 7] : $b A dictionary, historical and comparative, of the heterodox speech of all classes of society for more than three hundred years. With synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, etc.Henley, William Ernest
History
Slang and its analogues past and present, volume 3 [of 7] : $b A dictionary, historical and comparative, of the heterodox speech of all classes of society for more than three hundred years. With synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, etc.
Henley, William Ernest
English language -- Slang -- Dictionaries; Slang -- Dictionaries
General.—To Adam and Eve it; to blow the groundsels; to engage three to
one; to chuck a tread; to do (Jonson); to do it; to do ‘the act of
darkness’ (Shakspeare), the act of love, the deed of kind, the work of
increase, ‘the divine work of fatherhood’ (Whitman); to feed the
dumb-glutton; to get one’s hair cut; to slip in Daintie Davie (Scots’),
or Willie Wallace (idem); to get Jack in the orchard; to get on top of;
to give a lesson in simple arithmetic (i.e., addition, division,
multiplication and subtraction); to give a green gown (q.v.); to go
‘groping for trout in a peculiar river’ (Shakspeare); to go
face-making; to go to Durham (North Country); to go to see a sick
friend; to have it; to join faces (Durfey); to join giblets; to make
ends meet; to make the beast with two backs (Shakspeare and Urquhart);
to make a settlement in tail; to play top-sawyer; to put it in and
break it; to post a letter; to go on the stitch; to labor lea (Scots);
to tether one’s nags on (idem); to nail twa wames thegither (idem); to
lift a leg on (Burns); to ride a post (Cotton); to peel one’s end in;
to put the devil into hell (Boccaccio); to rub bacons (Urquhart); to
strop one’s beak; to strip one’s tarse in; to grind one’s tool; to
grease the wheel; to take on a split-arsed mechanic; to take a turn in
Bushey-park, Cock-alley, Cock-lane, Cupid’s-alley, Cupid’s-corner,
Hair-court, ‘the lists of love’ (Shakspeare), Love-lane, on Mount
Pleasant, among the parsley, on Shooter’s-hill, through the stubble; to
whack it up; to wollop it in; to labour leather; to wind up the clock
(Sterne).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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