John Camden Hotten

“ THE RHYMING SLANG.
There exists in London a singular tribe of men, known amongst the “fraternity of vagabonds” as chaunters and patterers. Both classes are great talkers. The first sing or chaunt through the public thoroughfares ballads—political and humorous—carols, dying speeches, and the various other kinds of gallows and street literature. The second deliver street orations on grease-removing compounds, plating powders, high-polishing blacking, and the thousand-and-one wonderful penny-worths that are retailed to gaping mobs from a London kerb-stone. ”

“ Mungarly casa, a baker’s shop; evidently a corruption of a Lingua Franca phrase for an eating-house. The well-known “Nix Mangiare” stairs at Malta derive their name from the endless beggars who lie there and shout, “Nix mangiare,” i.e., “Nothing to eat,” to excite the compassion of the English who land there,—an expression which exhibits remarkably the mongrel composition of the Lingua Franca, MANGIARE being Italian, and Nix (German, NICHTS) , an evident importation from Trieste, or other Austrian seaport. ”

“ Yet, ludicrously enough, immediately the fashionable magnates of England seize on any French idiom, the French themselves not only universally abandon it to us, but positively repudiate it altogether from their idiomatic vocabulary. If you were to tell a well-bred Frenchman that such and such an aristocratic marriage was on the tapis, he would stare with astonishment, and look down on the carpet in the startled endeavour to find a marriage in so unusual a place. ”

“ The universality of Slang is extraordinary. Let any person for a short time narrowly examine the conversation of his dearest and nearest friends, or even analyse his own supposed correct talk, and he shall be amazed at the numerous unauthorized, and what we can only call vulgar, words in constant use. One peculiarity of the growth of Slang is the finding of new meanings for old words. ”

“ Greek, framed in accordance with the rules which govern the construction of the language, are not Slang, but are good English, if not Saxon,—a term, by the way, which is as much misused as any unfortunate word that can be remembered just now. Sound contributes many Slang words—a source that etymologists frequently overlook. Nothing pleases an ignorant person so much as a high-sounding term, “full of fury.” ”

“ GLOSSARY OF THE BACK SLANG.
Birk, a “crib,”—a house.
Cool, to look.
Cool him, look at him. A phrase frequently used when one costermonger warns another of the approach of a policeman, or when any person worthy of notice passes by. When any old lady has been bargaining with a costermonger, and leaves his barrow without purchasing, the proprietor of the barrow will call out to the rest, “COOL the delo nammow,” which, though it means literally nothing beyond “Look at the old woman,” conveys to them an intimation that she is, from their point of view, a nuisance, and should be treated as such. ”

“ If society, as has been remarked, is a sham, from the vulgar foundation of commonalty to the crowning summit of royalty, then do we perceive the justness of the remark in that most peculiar of peculiarities, the Slang of makeshifts for oaths, and sham exclamations for passion and temper. ”

“ Cheap Jacks, or JOHNS, oratorical hucksters and patterers of hardware, who put an article up at a high price, and then cheapen it by degrees, indulging all the time in volleys of coarse wit, until it becomes to all appearance a bargain, and as such it is bought by one of the crowd. ”

“ The squeamishness which tries to ignore the existence of slang fails signally, for not only in the streets and the prisons, but at the bar, on the bench, in the pulpit, and in the Houses of Parliament, does slang make itself heard, and, as the shortest and safest means to an end, understood too. ”

“ Cocks, fictitious narratives, in verse or prose, of murders, fires, and terrible accidents, sold in the streets as true accounts. The man who hawks them, a patterer, often changes the scene of the awful event to suit the taste of the neighbourhood he is trying to delude. Possibly a corruption of cook, a cooked statement, or maybe “the story of a cock and a bull” may have had something to do with the term. Improvements in newspapers, especially in those published in the evening, and increased scepticism on the part of the public, have destroyed this branch of a once-flourishing business. ”

“ The coster has, of course, his own idea of the proper way of spelling words, and is not to be convinced but by an overwhelming show of learning,—and frequently not then, for he is a very headstrong fellow. By the time a coster has spelt an ordinary word of two or three syllables in the proper way, and then spelt it backwards, it has become a tangled knot that no etymologist could unravel. ”

“ A writer in Notes and Queries has well remarked that “the investigation of the origin and principles of cant and slang language opens a curious field of inquiry, replete with considerable interest to the philologist and the philosopher. It affords a remarkable instance of lingual contrivance, which, without the introduction of much arbitrary matter, has developed a system of communicating ideas, having all the advantages of a foreign language.” ”

“ On, “to be ON,” in public-house or vulgar parlance, is synonymous with getting “tight” or tipsy; “it’s St. Monday with him, I see he’s ON again,” i.e., drunk as usual, or on the road to it. “I’m ON” also expresses a person’s acceptance of an offered bet. To GET ON a horse or a man is to make bets on it or him. “Try it ON,” a defiant challenge to a person.
On the fly, getting one’s living by thieving or other illegitimate means; the phrase is applied to men the same as “on the loose” is to women. On the fly also means on the drink.
On the loose, obtaining a living by prostitution ”

“ For though the vulgar use of the word Slang applies to those words only which are used by the dangerous classes and the lowest grades of society, the term has in reality, and should have—as every one who has ever studied the subject knows—a much wider significance. ”

“ I will not weary you by further examples, with which most of you are better acquainted than I am myself, but merely express my satisfaction that there should exist bodies of men who will bring the well-considered and understood wants of science before the public and the Government, who will even hand round the begging-box, and expose themselves to refusals and rebuffs, to which all beggars are liable, with the certainty besides of being considered great BORES. Please to recollect that this species of BORE is a most useful animal, well adapted for the ends for which nature intended him. ”

“ The BOOKMAKER is distinguished from the backer by its being his particular business to bet against horses, or to lay, while the backer, who is also often a professional gambler, stands by the chance of a horse, or the chances of a set of horses about which he supposes himself to be possessed of special information. A bookmaker rarely backs horses for his own particular fancy—he may indeed put a sovereign or a fiver on an animal about which he has been told something, but as a rule if he specially fancies a horse, the bookmaker lets him “run for the BOOK,” i.e., does not lay against him. ”

“ Most nations, then, possess each a tongue, or series of tongues maybe, each based on the national language, by which not only thieves, beggars, and other outcasts communicate, but which is used more or less by all classes. There is hardly any community in this country, hardly any profession, but has its slang, [3] and proficiency in this is the greatest desideratum of an aspirant to the pleasures of Society, or the honours of literature and art. ”

“ Cross, a deception—two persons pretending hostility or indifference to each other, being all the while in concert for the purpose of deceiving a third. In the sporting world a CROSS is an arrangement made between two men that one shall win without reference to relative merits. This is sometimes done with the backer’s consent for the public benefit, at other times a backer is himself the sufferer, the men having “put some one in to lay,” according to instructions.—See DOUBLE CROSS.
Cross, a general term amongst thieves expressive of their plundering profession, the opposite of square. ”

“ The Stage, of course, has its Slang—“both before and behind the curtain,” as a journalist remarks. The stage-manager is familiarly termed “daddy;” and an actor by profession, or a “professional,” is called a “pro.” It is amusing at times to hear a young actor—who struts about padded with copies of all newspapers that have mentioned his name—talking, in a mixed company, of the stage as the profession. ”

“ Hog, “to go the whole HOG;” “the whole HOG or none,” to do anything with a person’s entire strength, not “by halves;” realized by the phrase “in for a penny in for a pound.” Bartlett claims this to be a pure American phrase; whilst Ker, of course, gives it a Dutch origin.—Old. “To go the whole HOG” is frequently altered by those people who believe there is wit in circumlocution, into “the entire animal,” or “the complete swine!”
Hoga, do. “That wont HOGA,” i.e., that wont do, is one of the very commonest of the Anglo-Indian slang phrases. ”

“ Or, in the buckra man’s language—
“White man eat [or steal] the crab,
And then crab eat the white man.”
Shakspeare evidently had the word NIM in his head when he portrayed Nym.
Nincompoop, a fool, a hen-pecked husband, a “Jerry Sneak.”—Corruption of non compos mentis.
[237]
Nine corns, a pipeful of tobacco.
Ninepence, “nice as NINEPENCE,” all right, right to a nicety. A correspondent says:—“This most undoubtedly should be NINE-PINS. For at the game of that name, in fairness to both parties, the nine pins must always be set up with great accuracy. There is no nicety in NINEPENCE!” ”

“ He who sells that of which he is not possessed is proverbially said to sell the skin before he has caught the BEAR. It was the practice of stock-jobbers, in the year 1720, to enter into a contract for transferring South Sea stock at a future time for a certain price; but he who contracted to sell had frequently no stock to transfer, nor did he who bought intend to receive any in consequence of his bargain; the seller was, therefore, called a BEAR, in allusion to the proverb, and [80] the buyer a BULL, perhaps only as a similar distinction. ”

“ Swift, and old Sir Roger L’Estrange, and Arbuthnot, were all fond of vulgar or Slang language; indeed, we may see from a Slang word used by the latter how curious [37] is the gradual adoption of vulgar terms in our standard dictionaries. The worthy doctor, in order to annihilate (or, as we should say, with a fitting respect to the subject under consideration, to “smash”) an opponent, thought proper on an occasion to use the word “cabbage,” not in the ancient sense of a flatulent vegetable of the kitchen-garden, but in the at once Slang sense of purloining or cribbing. ”

“ As generally happens with ill-gotten gains, the money soon finds its way to the landlord’s pocket, and the KNOCK-OUT is rewarded with a red nose and a bloated face. Cunning tradesmen join the KNOCK-OUTS when an opportunity for money-making presents itself. ”

“ The bookmakers in London have the information sent them by the touts in their pay, and lay against the SAFE UN, who is also called a “stiff un,” a “dead un,” or a “shtumer,” as often as they can, irrespective of the state of their books. Sometimes a SAFE UN will win, owing to the owner or trainer having, for various reasons, altered his mind. Such a result then goes to prove the “glorious uncertainty of the turf,” a phrase in very common use among sporting writers whenever a favourite is beaten, or whenever a horse runs slow one day and loses, and very fast the next day and wins. ”

“ Dick, abbreviation of “Dictionary,” but often euphemistically rendered “Richard,”—fine language, long words. A man who uses fine words without much judgment is said to have “swallowed the DICK.”
Dickens, synonymous with devil; “what the DICKENS are you after?” what the devil are you doing? Used by Shakspeare in the Merry Wives of Windsor. In many old stories his Satanic Majesty is called the DICKENS, and by no other name, while in some others the word is spelt “diconce.”
Dickey, bad, sorry, or foolish; food or lodging is pronounced DICKEY when of a poor description ”

“ A writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine for July, 1780, derives it either from LUFF, an old Scotch word for the hand, or from the Dutch, LOEF, the LOOF, weather-gauge (Sewell’s Dutch Dictionary, 4to, 1754) ; but it more probably, from the sense of the following, denotes something done without reciprocity.
Love, “to do a thing for LOVE,” i.e., for nothing. A man is said to marry for LOVE when he gets nothing with his wife; and an Irishman, with the bitterest animosity against his antagonist, will fight him for LOVE, i.e., for the mere satisfaction of beating him, and not for a stake. ”

“ To be crazy is to be OFF ONE’S CHUMP; this is varied by the word CHUMPY. A mild kind of lunatic is also said to be “off his head,” which means of course exactly the same as the first phrase.
Off one’s feed. To be unable to eat is to be OFF ONE’S FEED. Originally stable slang.
Off the horn, a term used in reference to very hard steak, which is fancifully said to be OFF THE HORN.
Office, “to give the OFFICE,” to give a hint dishonestly to a confederate, thereby enabling him to win a game or bet, the profits being shared. Also in sporting phraseology to give any information worth having. ”

“ The connexion is evident enough.
Fake, in the sporting world, means to hocus or poison. Fake is also a mixture supposed to be used for purposes of “making safe.”
[158]
Fake, to cheat, or swindle; to do anything; to go on, or continue; to make or construct; to steal or rob,—a verb variously used. Faked, done, or done for; “FAKE away, there’s no down;” go on, there is nobody looking. From the Latin FACERE.
Fakement, a false begging petition, any act of robbery, swindling, or deception. Fakement is a word of most general application among the lower classes. ”

“ The married men mostly have lodgings in London, and come and go as occasion may require. A few never quit London streets, but the greater number tramp to all the large provincial fairs, and prefer the “monkery” (country) to town life. Some transact their business in a systematic way, sending a post-office order to the Seven Dials’ printer for a fresh supply of ballads or penny books, or to the “swag shop,” as the case may be, for trinkets and gewgaws, to be sent on by rail to a given town by the time they shall arrive there. ”

“ Handicap, an arrangement by which, in any description of sport, every competitor in a race is supposed to have a chance of winning equal to the chances of his opponents. Handicapping, in horse-racing signifies the adjudgment of various weights to horses differing in age, power, and speed, so as to place them as much as possible on an equality. ”