_Etrangler un perroquet_ is to drink a glass of absinth, the allusion being to the colour (green), and also, it is said, to the sensation in swallowing the absinth, and to other minute points. A prostitute is the _hôtel du besoin_, a _Louis-quinze_, and also the _bourre-de-soie_, in allusion, it is said, to murmured offers and a silk dress; the brothel is _le cloaque_. In Venetian slang a promise is called a shadow. In Bavarian cant a playing card is _karzerweg_--the road to prison. Very strange, remote, and bizarre are some of these slang synonyms, full of coarse ironies and jests. _Paradouze = paradis_ (_douze_ instead of _dise_); _saucisse = moi_ (by way of _moi-s-aussi_); _crottard = trottoir_; _blanchir du foie_ = to intend betrayal (play on _foi_); _perdreau = pederaste_ (_pedro-pédero_); _herbe sainte = absinthe_; _être dans l’infanterie_ = to be pregnant (_enfanter_); _moulin à vent = derrière_; _pape = verre de rhum_ (_Rome_); _veronique = lanterne_ (_verre_); _vert-de-gris = absinthe_ (play on _vert_ and _verre_, with allusion to its deleterious properties); _demoiselle du Pont-neuf_ (that all may go over) = prostitute; _apaier_ = to assassinate; _boire dans la grande tasse_ = to drown oneself; a knife is a _lingre_ (from Langres, the French Sheffield); the _souteneur_ (a prostitute’s bully) is called by the English word _fish_, or some similar name (_poisson_, _goujon_, _baraillon_, _maquereau_); the prostitute is called _morue_, and _Banc de Terre-Neuve_ is applied to that portion of the Parisian boulevards lying between the Madeleine and the Porte Saint-Denis. Sometimes the slang of criminals, like that of the rest of the world, commemorates an historical fact. To dethrone in France is _juilletiser_. The sun is _le grand Jablo_, Jablochoff’s electric lamps having been the first used to illuminate Paris. A _coup de Raguse_ is a defection, in allusion to the Duke of Ragusa. In Italy a drunkard is called a Frenchman, a beggar a Spaniard, a card-sharper a Greek. In Spain a thief is called a _Murcio_, from the province of Murcia. Words are frequently abbreviated. As examples, Lombroso mentions _tra = travail_; _ces mess = ces Messieurs_ = the police; _chand = marchand_; _lubre = lugubre_; _abs = absinthe_; _avoir ses aff = avoir ses affaires_ (_menstrues_); _mac = maquereau = souteneur_, of a prostitute. Very curious are the large number of foreign words, in more or less corrupted form generally, which are to be found in criminal slang. In the German cant Hebrew words are numerous; German and French in Italian; German and English in French; Italian and Romany in English. “Hebrew, or rather Yiddish,” Lombroso observes, “supplies the half of Dutch slang, and nearly a fourth of German, in which I counted 156 out of 700, and in which all the terms for various crimes (except _band-spicler_ for a cheater at dice) are Jewish.” The presence of archaisms, classical and mediæval, is also curious.