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  • (noun) - The tendon of the neck of cattle or sheep. Figuratively, and perhaps ludicrously, transferred to the punishment of the juggs, or pillory. --John Jamieson's Scottish Etymological Dictionary, 1808

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - Formerly all English dinners commenced with pudding, as they still do in remote districts. Hence, pudding-time meant dinner time. A foreigner who in the seventeenth century visited England and published his experiences in 1698 speaks enthusiastically of English puddings: "Oh what an excellent thing is an English pudding! To come at pudding-time is a proverbial phrase meaning to come at the happiest moment in the world. Make a pudding for an Englishman and you will regale him." --Henry Reddall's Fact, Fancy, and Fable, 1889

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - A smuggler. Sussex. --Edward Nairne's Kentish Tales with Historical Notes, 1790

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) The use of ambiguous expressions. --Edward Lloyd's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, 1895 (2) The use of indeterminate expressions; discourse of doubtful meaning. --Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755 (3) Double-speaking. --Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary, 1749

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A ring made of the hinge of a coffin is supposed to have the virtue of preventing the cramp. --Francis Grose's Provincial Glossary, 1787 (2) Formerly, rings made from the hinges of coffins were worn as charms for the cure of fits, or for the prevention of cramp or even rheumatism. The superstition continues, though the metal is of necessity changed, few coffins having now hinges of silver. --John Harland and T.T. Wilkinson's Lancashire Folklore, 1867 (3) When a grave was reopened, people stripped a piece of metal from an old coffin. It was cut in circular shape, a hole was bored in it, and the amulet was worn suspended from a ribbon round the neck. --Marie Trevelyan's Folklore of Wales, 1909

    April 23, 2018

  • (adjective) - Sheep's-eyed; sidelong; shy; used also when a person squints a little. Perhaps the word is cannywest, for canny hinny, in some parts, means a sly person. --Rev. Alfred Easther's Glossary of Almondbury and Huddersfield, 1883

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - A medicine which when applied to the mucous membrane of the nose increases the natural secretions and produces sneezing. Having the action of an errhine. --Sydenham Society's Lexicon of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 1897

    April 23, 2018

  • (verb) - The knocker-up carries a long pole with which he taps at the bedroom windows of his clients. --Thomas Darlington's Folk-Speech of Cheshire, 1887

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - The phrase, "the hammer of it," means the long and short of it. "That's about the hammer of it," concludes an argument or explanation. --Edward Gepp's Essex Dialect Dictionary, 1923

    April 23, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - People without the ties of business. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - Justice of the Peace. --A.V. Judges' The Elizabethan Underworld Glossary, 1930

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A cavity in a rock; a cave, a hollow; adaptation of Cornish mining term vooga; hence, vuggy, full of cavities. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1928 (2) Vughy rock, a stratum of cellular structure, or one containing many cavities. --William Gresley's Glossary of Terms Used in Coal Mining, 1883

    April 23, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Those who signed the Declaration of Independence. --Richard Thornton's American Glossary, 1912

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - The maid who attends the kimmer, or matron who has the charge of the infant at kimmerings, or baptisms; who lifts the babe into the arms of its father to receive the sprinkling of salvation. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824

    April 23, 2018

  • pregnance, fertility, inventive power. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - One who pledges a ship, or other property, as security for the repayment of money borrowed. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - A blue pig is a place where whiskey is surreptitiously sold. --Gilbert Tucker's American English, 1921

    April 23, 2018

  • (verb) - (1) To be a busybody or eavesdropper. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905 (2) To collect and retail scandal. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - A vacillation or wavering in decision; formed on Latin volo, I am willing, and nolo, I am unwilling. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1929

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - The bed kept in farmers' barns for beggars. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824

    April 23, 2018

  • (noun) - An eyeglass. This was applied to the old single eyeglass, which was not stuck in the eye, as now, but was held in the hand. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887

    April 23, 2018

  • s:

    Fipple (noun) - (1) The underlip. "See how he hangs his fipple." --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825 (2) The underlip in men and animals, when it hangs down large and loose. "To hang one's fipple," to look disappointed, discontented, or sulky; also, to weep. --John Jamieson's Scottish Etymological Dictionary, 1808

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A name given to beans, peas, tares, vetches, and such vegetables as have pods; Kent. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A fellow who grumpfs at all genuine sports and sits as sour as the devil when all around him are joyous. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - One who is on the lookout for a fire. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A disturbance; corrupted from rendezvous. --G.C. Lewis' Glossary of Provincial Herefordshire, 1839

    April 22, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Women who make gloves. --Angelina Parker's Supplement to the Oxfordshire Glossary, 1881

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - Corpulent early 1600s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908

    April 22, 2018

  • deep red

    April 22, 2018

  • deep red

    April 22, 2018

  • light blue

    April 22, 2018

  • scarlet

    April 22, 2018

  • (gris-de-lin, or flax blossom

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A shade of brown of the color of a faded leaf. Anglicised as feulemort, fillamort, filemot, phillemot, and philomot. French, literally "dead leaf." --C.A.M. Fennell's The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases, 1964 (2) To make a countryman understand what feuillemorte colour signifies it might suffice to tell him, 'tis the colour of withered leaves falling in Autumn. --John Locke's Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, 1690

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A patient waiter for good fortune. --Alexander Warrack's Scots Dialect Dictionary, 1911

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A person who stands upon a cliff or elevated part of the seacoast in the time of the herring fishery to point out to the fishermen by signs the course of the shoals of fish. From French conduire to conduct, guide. -- Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - To be willing to fight; Isle of Wight. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - An officer of the royal household whose business is to see the king's lodging furnished with gambling-related tables, chairs, stools and firing, and to decide disputes arising at cards, dice, bowling, &c. --Ephraim Chambers' Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 1728

    April 22, 2018

  • In 1592, an archery custom was begun by the founder of the Harrow School in England. Boys competed for a silver arrow, the winner being honored at a school dance that concluded the festivities. The "Harrow shootings" were discontinued in 1771 as the headmaster grew intolerant of the many exemptions from school attendance by the competitors. Beyond this, W. & R. Chambers' Book of Days (1864) reported, "He also observed, as other masters had before him, that the contest usually brought down a band of profligate and disorderly persons from the metropolis, to the demoralisation of the village."

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - This was a term in use with the Anglo-Saxons from its necessity in archery, and it is now called the trigger-finger, from its equal importance in modern fire-arms. The mutilation of this member was always a most punishable offence, for which the laws of King Alfred inflicted a penalty of fifteen shillings, which at that time probably was a sum beyond the bowman's means. --Admiral William Smyth's Sailor's Word Book, 1867

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A pain in the head at sunrise; headache. --J. Combs' Old English in Southern Mountains: A Word List from Kentucky, 1916-1923

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - An umbrella. --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Anything overcooked. --J.H. Nodal's A Glossary of the Lancashire Dialect, 1882

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) The behavior and manners of an alderman. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850 (2) In humorous imitation of humanity. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Valour. Orpinn is the participle of verpa, to warp or throw in Old Norse. Hence, orped comes to signify "headlong, daring, or valorous." Pronounced OR-ped-ship. --Herbert Coleridge's Dictionary of the Oldest Words in the English Language, 1863

    April 22, 2018

  • Cleiking the Devil - During the third week of August, traditional games, a bonfire in which the devil is burned in effigy, and the symbolic release of a flock of pigeons by St. Ronan make up part of the Cleikum ceremony, which was founded in the 1820s in Innerleithen, Peeblesshire, Scotland, by the likes of Sir Walter Scott, poet James Hogg, and John Lockhart. In this carryover of the St. Ronan Border Games, a boy is chosen to impersonate seventh-century monk St. Ronan, who is remembered for having bested the devil by educating the laity. An elaborate ritual depicts the saint using his crozier, a bishop's curved staff, to grab a boy who represents the cloven-hoofed prince of darkness, an action known locally as "cleiking." Cleik has been used in a number of related Scottish idioms, such as cleik the cunyie, to lay hold of money, and cleik-in-the-back, back pain that feels like a hook catching one.

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - Having hoofs that are whole, or not cloven. A horse is a solidungulous animal. From Latin solidus, solid, and ungula, hoof. --Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828

    April 22, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Sweetmeats, lollipops. Near Stratford-on-Avon. --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - Of a married couple--the husband old and the wife young. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A price or ransom to be paid for the saving of his skin from being beaten. --William Rastell's Termes of the Lawes of England, 1708

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - The act of fixing images of objects by the camera obscura. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A hole in a fence, or passage for hares or sheep; Craven. --John Walker's Dictionary of the English Language, 1835 (2) Related to smuce, a hole which rabbits make through a hedge. --Rev. Alfred Easther's Glossary of Almondbury and Huddersfield, 1883

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - Burnt, scorched; hot and fiery. From Latin ad, to, and ustus, burnt. Hence adustible, that may be burnt up, and adustion, the act of burning, scorching. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A sudden motion of air, no other way perceptible but by its whirling up the dust on a dry road in perfectly calm weather, resembling a water-spout. --John Walker's Dictionary of the English Language, 1835 (2) Occasionally, a rodges-blast sweeps like a whirlwind over the marsh, wrecking windmills. --G.C. Davies' Norfolk Broads, 1890

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - In many of our large towns, the bell rung at ten o'clock at night is called Lourie, lang Lourie, or big Lourie. Its call is still at least acknowledged to be the signal for respectable people to retire homeward from calls and amusements. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A nuptial song in praise of the bride and bridegroom, wishing them happiness. --Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary, 1749

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - To bewitch, confuse, dazzle, as with lights. --Michael Traynor's The English Dialect of Donegal, 1953

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A noise made by a pig. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A stench; obscurity in the air arising from smoke, fog, or dust. To smeech, to make a stink with the snuff of a candle. Smeegy, tainted, ill-smelling. Connected with Anglo-Saxon smec, smic, smoke; Bavarian schmecken, to smell, and thence schmecker, the nose. --Hensleigh Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology, 1878

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Cloth or flax dipped in warm medicaments and applied to a hurt or sore; a sweating-bath. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

    April 22, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Walnuts. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of West Devonshire, 1796

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) Divination by a broiled asse's head. --Elisha Coles' English Dictionary, 1713 (2) Cephaleonomancy, or the art of divination by an ass' head, is a species of art magic which still flourishes in England. --Robert Southey's Letters From England, 1807

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Neurosthenia debilitas nervosa. Debility or impaired activity of the nerves. From Greek roots meaning "a nerve" and "disability." --Robley Dunglison's Dictionary of Medical Science, 1844

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) Gold dissolved and mixed with oil of rosemary to be drank. --John Coxe's Medical Dictionary, 1817 (2) Among chymists apothecaries, a rich cordial liquor with pieces of gold leaf in it. --Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary, 1749

    April 22, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - (1) Persons who ride fast on horseback, and send the wash, or dubs, about on both sides of the way. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824 (2) Dub-skelper, one who makes his way with such expedition as not to regard the road he takes, whether it be clean or foul; used contemptuously for a rambling fellow. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - (1) To cease from boasting. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922 (2) Sing small is another phrase which carelessness in pronunciation has changed from the original. The phrase should be "sink small," to be lowered in the estimation of one's fellows. --Edwin Radford's Encyclopaedia of Phrases and Origins, 1945

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - To go fast, in allusion to the rapid motion of a horse on a muddy road, and to the fondness of Americans for fast driving. --Sylva Clapin's Dictionary of Americanisms, 1902

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A schoolmaster, with a play on the word phlebotomist, a bloodletter. --John Farmer and W.E. Henley's Slang and Its Analogues, 1904 (2) A pedantical whip-arse. --Randle Cotgrave's Dictionary of the French and English Tongues, 1611

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A boat used in pioneer times by a family in emigrating down rivers, especially the Ohio and Mississippi. --Mitford Mathews' Dictionary of Americanisms, 1956 (2) The crafts are square arks nine or ten feet wide, and varying in length as occasion may require. They are roofed all over, except a portion of the fore part, where two persons row. --James Flint's Letters From America, 1822

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A baseball player. --Richard Thornton's An American Glossary, 1912

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A name which is supposed to show a partiality on its owner's part for strong drink. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - Slippery. Not an abbreviation, but a pure Saxon word, and as shown by Mr. Todd, of Old English usage, not withstanding which the great lexicographer characterized it as a barbarous provincial term, from slip. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Doctoring, medicinal care. --Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, 1886

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - Showy, flattering. It is probable that when this word was first adopted it was pronounced as close to the French gentil as possible, but as we have no letter in our language equivalent to the French soft g, and as the nasal vowel en, when not followed by hard g, c, or k, is not to be pronounced by a mere English speaker, it is no wonder that the word was anglisized in its sound, as well as in its orthography. --John Walker's Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language, 1835

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - In some counties, when a man has been guilty of inflicting personal chastisement upon his wife, it was customary for his neighbours to empty a sack or two of chaff in front of the offender's door to signify that thrashing had been done there. This is called chaffing. --Eliezer Edwards' Words, Facts, and Phrases, 1882

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A cow without horns. --Edward Slow's Glossary of Wiltshire Words, Used by the Peasantry in the Neighborhood of Salisbury, c. 1900

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) An acid liquor prepared from very sour grapes or crabapples. It is principally used in culinary preparations, although occasionally an ingredient in medicinal compounds. --Robley Dunglison's Dictionary of Medical Science, 1844 (2) From French verd, green, and jus, juice; used in sauces, ragouts, and the like. --T. Ellwood Zell's Popular Encyclopedia, 1871

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - At present, offensive and moving disgust; but once, noxious and actually hurtful. Thus, a skunk would be noisome now, a tiger was noisome then. --Richard Chenevix Trench's Select Glossary, 1859

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A kind of beer between table-beer and ale, formerly drunk by the middling classes, which seems to have been thus denominated because it was customary to hand it round in a little cap. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - To blind; to hoodwink. Refashioned as inveigle; from French aveugler. --C.A.M. Fennell's The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases, 1964

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - It was an ancient notion that men in their cups exhibited the vicious qualities of beasts. Thomas Nashe c. 1600 describes seven kinds of drunkards: "The ape-drunk, who leaps and sings; the lion-drunk, who is quarrelsome; the swine-drunk, who is sleepy and puking; the sheep-drunk, wise in his own conceit but unable to speak; the martin-drunk, who drinks himself sober again; the goat-drunk, who is lascivious; and the fox-drunk, who is crafty." --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Mist; fog. Moaky, dull, misty, dark weather. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900

    April 22, 2018

  • itinerant peddler

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - Inverted or confused. Bells are "rung awk" to give alarm of fire. Ray's South and East Country Words 1691 says that awkward is opposed to toward. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830

    April 22, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Showy or fantastic adornments. --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896

    April 22, 2018

  • (adverb) - A familiar and very old phrase denoting to quarrel or fight. It alludes to the practice of dogs which, when fighting, seize each other by the ears. --John Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms 1849

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A boat moved by horses. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective/noun) - (1) All of a heap; generally used of entangled thread. --Walter Skeat's Specimens of English Dialects: Westmorland, 1879 (2) Overtwisted thread, or worsted, run into lumps. The English drove the variant forms, snigsnarls, snicksnarls, and snogsnarls to snocksnarls. --C. Clough Robinson's Glossary of Mid-Yorkshire, 1876

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - In most country districts, a certain distance is laid out by custom within which persons are bidden from each house to a funeral. --Rev. Alfred Easther's Glossary of Almondbury and Huddersfield, 1883

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Wickedness; from luther, wicked. Also lutherness. --Herbert Coleridge's Dictionary of the Oldest Words in the English Language, 1863

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - The garment donned by Millerites on the day in 1843 when they expected the end of the world. --Mitford Mathews' Dictionary of Americanisms, 1956

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A corruption of three-thirds, it denoted a draught, once popular, made up of a third each of ale, beer and "two-penny," in contradistinction to "half-and-half." This beverage was superseded in 1722 by the very similar porter, or "entire." --Robert Chambers' Encyclopedia, 1874 (2) Half common ale, and the rest stout or double beer. --B.E.'s Dictionary of the Canting Crew, 1699 (3) Porter was last brewed in the British Isles in Dublin in 1973. The last draughts of the brew were consumed, in true Irish style, at a wake for porter, which was held in a country pub near Belfast in May of that year. The mourners wore black bowlers, downed the porter, and consigned its container in a coffin draped in "Guinness black." --Michael Jackson's The World Guide to Beer, 1977

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Jewelry; the making or dealing in jewelry. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A mousetrap 1300s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Bearleader or tender. In the old accounts of Congleton between 1589 and 1613, we find payments to the bearward for fetching the bears to the wakes, "for wine, sack, spice, almonds, figs and beer at the great bear-bait." The Bear's Head and White Bear Inn still testify to the former favorite sport of the town. Erasmus, who visited England in the time of Henry VIII, says there were many herds of bears supported in this country for the purpose of baiting. --Edgerton Leigh's Dialect of Cheshire, 1877

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - The name given to an eighteenth-century practice whereby the churchwardens of a parish used their authority to enforce the marriage of a pregnant woman. The term "knobstick" was in allusion to the churchwarden's staff, his symbol of office. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A dancing-master. --B.E.'s Dictionary of the Canting Crew, 1699

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - (1) To rise on the stomach with a degree of nausea; applied to articles of diet which prove disagreeable to the taste or difficult of digestion. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825 (2) An appetite to eate or drynke mylke, to the extent that it shal not arise or abraid in the stomake. --Sir Thomas Elyot's The Castel of Helth, 1539

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - Cool, windy, damp; said of the weather; Missouri, Arkansas. --Harold Wentworth's The American Dialect Dictionary, 1944

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Dealer in articles used for worship in churches. --Albert Barrère's Argot and Slang Dictionary, 1911

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - To kick and knock things to desolation, like a mad horse. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - During the Middle Ages, the custom grew of allowing the choristers of cathedrals to choose yearly one of their number to act the part of a bishop. If the boy-bishop died within the short period of office, he was buried in episcopal robes. A tomb with the effigy of a boy so clothed may be seen in Salisbury Cathedral. --T. Ellwood Zell's Popular Encyclopedia, 1871

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - The cod fish--a slang term which is used interchangeably with Marblehead Turkey in Massachusetts. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - To treat contemptuously; to villify. To bauchle a lass, to jilt a young woman. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - The plaster of which the court ladies made their patches. These patches, worn on the face, were cut into the shapes of crescents, stars, circles, diamonds, hearts, crosses, and some even went so far as to patch their faces with a coach-and-four, a ship in full sail, a château, etc. This ridiculous fashion was in vogue in the reign of Charles I, and in the reign of Anne was employed as the badge of political partisanship. The Whig belles wore patches of court plaster on the right side and the Tories on the left side of their faces or foreheads. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1887

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - To find a ready means of evading a law or regulation. Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847) the Irish orator and agitator boasted, "I can drive a coach-and-six horses through any Act of Parliament," in allusion to the loose manner in which parliamentary bills were drafted. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A man fetched from the tavern or ale-house by his wife is said to be "arrested by the white serjeant." --Francis Grose's A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796 (2) A mythical person or bugaboo to scare children; one who will take them away if they are not good. --Michael Traynor's The English Dialect of Donegal, 1953

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A small cake; Anglo-Saxon. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855 (2) It was a good old custom for God-fathers and God-mothers, every time their God-children asked their blessing, to give them a cake, which was a God's-kichell. It is still a proverbial saying in some countries, "Ask me a blessing and I will give you a plum-cake." --John Cowell's The Interpreter: The Signification of Words, 1701

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A deceiver, imposter; apparently from Old French truffant, or Medieval Latin truffans, a fraud. --Mairi Robinson's Concise Scots Dictionary, 1985

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - A sow when she takes the boar is said to be a-brimming; and the boar is said to brim her. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of East Yorkshire, 1788

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Wait is an old English word allied to the German wachte, meaning a watchman. It was formerly applied to the court watchmen who blew their horns at certain hours of the night. The name has been extended to any outdoor instrumentalist who performed at night, particularly at Christmas. --J.B. Lippincott's Everyday Phrases Explained, 1913

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A soothsaying; a foretelling; sometimes written hariolation; from Latin ariolus. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

    April 22, 2018

  • (adverb) - It has been pouring what we in England vulgarly term "cats and dogs," but which on the politer shores of the Mississippi might be called "raccoons and alligators." --George Sala's America Revisited, 1883

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - As big as Ketherick's pie: Ketherick was the first mayor of Plymouth (1493). The pie for his inaugural banquet is said to have been fourteen feet long. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A composition of cream, eggs, sugar, and whisky. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905 (2) Used by the Highlanders after a drinking match. "Flora made me a bowl of old man's milk, but nothing would bring me round." --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) Frequenter of ladies' chambers; a gallant. --C.T. Onions' Shakespeare Glossary, 1911 (2) One who indulges in wantonness. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850 (3) Chamberers, men of intrigue. Othello. --Rev. Alexander Dyce's Glossary to the Works of William Shakespeare, 1902 (4) A woman who attends to a bedchamber; a chambermaid; a concubine. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1893 (5) An effeminate man; a carpet-knight. --John Phin's Shakespeare Cyclopaedia and New Glossary, 1902

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A person fond of prying into matters which concern him nothing. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824

    April 22, 2018

  • defined by Alexander Warrack's Scots Dialect Dictionary (1911) as "on its back and unable to rise."

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - An inflammation of the bowels, to which children are subject. It is brought on by disorders of the milk, by exposure to cold, and living in low, cold, damp situations. It has been said that those afflicted with this disease have often a swelling in the side. Hence perhaps the name. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - Hoyt, or hoit, is to act the romp or hoyden. Winsome and spirited maids go hoyting across the English stage of the seventeenth century. Hoity-toity is an expansion of the same word and originally applied to frolicsome women. The meaning of hoity-toity was altered to become an expression of petulance and surprised disgust, in which function it remains common. The verb to hoit almost disappeared. It is a pity, as it went well with the racing and chasing of "delightfull girles" in an anonymous poem of 1675, The Chase: So ran, so sang, so hoyted the moone's maids/Light as young leverettes greyhounds skip their buskin'd feet,/Spurning th' enamell'd sward grass as they did fleet. --Ivor Brown's Book of Words, 1944

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A drink made of Indian corn, parched and used as coffee 1800s. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - "I'll neither mack nor mell," I'll not interfere. Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. --F.T. Dinsdale's Glossary of Provincial Words Used in Teesdale in the County of Durham, 1849

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - One who pretends to be possessed of wealth, influence, rank, or indeed any quality which is only conspicuous by its absence. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A highly nervous state; central New York; noted 1912. --Harold Wentworth's American Dialect Dictionary, 1944

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A fine or blackmail levied on a man who courts a woman residing out of the limits of his own parish. If this be a survival of an ancient practice or custom, it would appear that neither exogamy marriage with nonlocals nor "marriage by capture" were usual at a remote period in this district; but that, on the contrary, the villagers did not, in general, marry outside the limits of their own kindred by blood. --Sidney Addy's Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Sheffield, 1888

    April 22, 2018

  • (interjection) - In what state is your health? Used as a compliment of civility or an inquiry into the state of a person's health; of how, do and ye; whence "howdy". --Daniel Fenning's Royal English Dictionary, 1775

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A tickling faint cough; called also a "tissicky cough." --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Snow and water mixed; very cold liquor; Shakespeare. --Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective/verb) - (1) An expression denoting secrecy as well as silence. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850 (2) To come mumbudgeting, to come clandestinely. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - In allusion to the appearance of wisdom given by a goat's beard. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A figurative garment which is supposed to clothe a troubled female. "She's got her fretting-frock on." --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) An outlaw, meaning a person who might be killed with impugnity, like a wolf. --Thomas Tayler's Law Glossary, 1856 (2) In Old English Law, a cry for the pursuit of an outlaw as one to be hunted down like a wolf; an outlaw. Originally found in the phrase "to cry wolf's head." --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1928

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A learned or pedantic word or expression; an inkhorn term. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901 (2) This phrase, once common, might be revived to signify pedantic expressions which "smell of the lamp." Shakespeare uses the phrase "inkhorn mate" in 1 Henry IV. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - An obsolete English word still used in Kentucky and the South for a small dog or cur, sometimes spelt phyce. The word is perhaps one of the most interesting cases of survival presented by American philology. It is evidently the last small remnant of the old English "foisting cur," quoted as "foisting hound" in Wright's Provincial Dialects 1857. Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors 1859 gives nearly the whole process of gradual corruption: "foisting, foisty, foist, fyst, fyce," and Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words 1855 describes the "foisting-hound" as "a kind of lap-dog," so called from its bad habits, which often have to serve as an excuse for the sins of the owner. A "fisting hound" also is mentioned as a kind of spaniel in Harrison's Description of England 1587. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - The moon; Northamptonshire, Worcestershire, Hallamshire. --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A sum of money put out to interest in a bank. Aberdeenshire. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A sudden translation of property in land by the death of a rich man. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - Rickety; ramshackle. U.S. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1919

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - Worn out; limp; tired. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - One who tells fortunes by examining the hand. Chirographic, chirographical, pertaining to chirography; the art of telling fortunes by examining the hand. --John Ridpath's Home Reference Library, 1898

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - The absence of science, or knowledge; ignorance; Chaucer. --Robert Hunter's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1894

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - Brackish; applied to smuggled spirits which have been impregnated with salt-water. --William Cope's Glossary of Hampshire Words and Phrases, 1883

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A party; a set of people, a crowd, implying unity, relationship, or nationality. As -ption occurs as postfix to other words, such as gumption and conniption, it may have been added in this case to the German-Hebrew word karim or the plural krauwim, relations or the related. --Albert Barrère's Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant, 1889

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A light person, and not heavily clothed. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824 (2) From the idea of stripping a fly of its covering. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

    April 22, 2018

  • - On February 22, 1719, a strange socioeconomic ritual was reenacted. According to Alice Morse Earle's Stagecoach and Tavern Days (1900), an odd American custom known as a "shift marriage," which absolved a widow of any previous debts incurred by her dead husband, was carefully observed at a certain crossroad. Justice George Hazard explained that a widow from South Kingston, Rhode Island, was remarried "after she had gone four times across the highway in only her shift with hair low, and no other clothing." Hazard also recorded that a scantily clad Narragansett widow was wed at midnight, "where four roads meet." This risqué practice, which was apparently honored by creditors as well, was carried on sporadically through much of the 18th century in New England and Pennsylvania.

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Household stuff. The word is used to denote an entire collection, like "bag and baggage." From Welsh gweddill, remnants. Welsh gweddilio is to leave a remnant, and gweddw is a widow, or left person. Gweddill is therefore connected with the root of widow, which seems to exist in most European languages. --G.C. Lewis's Glossary of Provincial Words Used in Herefordshire, 1839

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A glutinous substance extracted from the inner bark of the holly, used for catching birds. The bark is bruised, boiled with water till very soft, and placed in pits to ferment. After two or three weeks, a curious viscid mass is found in the place of the soft bark; this is boiled with a quantity of water and evaporated to a proper consistence. It is spread on twigs or wire netting. Birds are often drawn to the sticky perches by the treacherous singing of a decoy. --T. Ellwood Zell's Popular Encyclopedia, 1871

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) He that can write and reade, and sometime speake Latin. He useth these skills to make counterfaite licences which they call gybes, and sets to seales, in their language falsified documents called jarks. --John Awdelay's Fraternitye of Vagabondes, 1561 (2) Yea, the jarkman is so cunning sometimes that he can speake Latine, which learning of his lifts him up to advancement. By that means he becomes Clarke of their Hall, and his office is to make counterfeit licenses, to which he puts seales, and those are termed jarkes. --Thomas Dekker's The Belman of London, 1608 (3) Jark was rogues' cant for a seal, whence also a license of the Bethlehem Hospital "Bedlam" to beg. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1870

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - (1) To swindle--the coney, or rabbit, being considered a very simple animal. --John Phin's Shakespeare Cyclopædia and New Glossary, 1902 (2) It has been shown, from Dekker's English Villanies 1632, that the system of swindling was carried to a great length in the 17th century involving a collective society of sharpers, called a warren, and their dupes, rabbit-suckers--that is, young rabbits, or conies. --Robert Nares's Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A term used facetiously for a party --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940 (2) "I sat in the corner like a homely girl at a kissing-bee, and had nothing to say." --W.F. Drannan's Thirty-one Years on the Plains and in the Mountains, 1900

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - The distressing cry of persons under surgical operations. --Robert Hooper's Compendious Medical Dictionary, 1798

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - Black, dirty. From blatch, soot or dirt; to smirch with black. --J. Drummond Robertson's Glossary of Dialect & Archaic Words Used in the County of Gloucester, 1890

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A journalist; from diurnal, relating to a day; happening every day. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Mole; from Old Teutonic mold, earth, and worpon to throw up. --Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary, 1749

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - Fast asleep is never used. Vale of Gloucestershire. --J. Drummond Robertson's Glossary of Dialect & Archaic Words Used in the County of Gloucester, 1890

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - (1) Rash to an extreme, in allusion to March being the rutting time of hares, when they are very excitable. Mad as a March hare, as mad as a hare in the rutting season, when they are wild, flighty and strange. --Rev. James Stormonth's Dictionary of the English Language, 1884 (2) Keep him darke, He will run March mad else. --John Fletcher's Mad Lover, 1647

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - An old word for an ominous message. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - To beat up a Congressman. In allusion to a beating administered by Sam Houston to Representative William Stanberry April 13, 1832. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - The equivalent of grass-widow--a married woman whose husband is away for any extended period. The expression dates from the period of California "gold fever," when many men went west, leaving their families behind. --Sylva Clapin's New Dictionary of Americanisms, 1902

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A healthy child born in the 19th century theatrical profession. --Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 1951

    April 22, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - The small, worthless apples which are left hanging on the trees after the crop has been gathered; Worcestershire. Scriggins, apples left on a tree after the ingathering; Gloucestershire. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A census-taker; humorous. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940

    April 22, 2018

  • (verb) - To rub, polish. Our parents and grandparents polished their furniture with a homemade mixture of beer, treacle, vinegar, &c. --Edward Gepp's Essex Dialect Dictionary, 1923

    April 22, 2018

  • Feast Day of St. Cuthbert, who was invoked to ward of nautical misfortune. Thomas Harman's A Caveat or Warening for Commen Cursetors (1567) told readers of "freshwater mariners" known as "whipjackes"--phony beggars whose vessels were, as Harman explained it, wrecked far inland at the "Playne of Salisbery." He cautioned, "These kynde of caterpillers counterfet great losses on the sea. These wyll runne about the country wyth a counterfet lycence, fayning either shypwracke or spoyle by pyrates neare the coaste of Cornwall or Devonshyre, and lande at some haven towne there, having a large and formall wrytinge with the names and seales of suche men of worshyppe, at the least foure or five, as dwelleth neare the place where they fayne their landinge. And neare to those shires wyll they not begge untyll they come into Wylshyre, Hamshyre, Barkeshyre, Oxfordshyre, Middelsex, and so to London, and downe by the ryver to seeke for their shyppe and goods that they never hade; then passe they into Kent, demaunding almes to bring them home."

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A false paper carried by an imposter, giving an account of a dreadful shipwreck. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A pickpocket; also applied to fingers, no doubt for a similar reason. To dive is to pick pockets. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887

    April 22, 2018

  • (adverb/adjective) - Towards death or the grave. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1897

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - A witch-finder who discovered witches by pricking them with a wooden bodkin or pin looking for the "witch-mark." Witch-score, the mark made with a sharp instrument on the forehead of a supposed witch to render her harmless. --Alexander Warrack's Scots Dialect Dictionary, 1911

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Doggerel verse; from the lines formerly engraved on knife blades. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice (1596). --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - In Lancashire we find the term gyst-ale, which seems to be one of the corruptions of disguising, as applied to mumming. Gyst-ale, or guising, was celebrated in Eccles England with much rustic splendor at the termination of the marling field-dunging season when the villagers, with a "king" at their head, walked in procession with garlands, to which silver plate was attached, which was contributed by the principal gentry in the neighbourhood. --R.T. Hampson's Dates, Charters, and Customs of the Middle Ages, 1841

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - The hand of a clock. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1893

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Composition in rhyme; poetry. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

    April 22, 2018

  • (adjective) - A strange synonym for "the real thing," the very essence of an argument. Also applied to any subject thought worthy of superlative praise. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889

    April 22, 2018

  • noun) - The removal of rats in a body from any place they have formerly occupied. Western Scotland. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

    April 22, 2018

  • (noun) - Blunk of weather, a fit of squally, tempestuous weather. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of East Norfolk, 1787

    April 22, 2018

  • Western slang: Sleeping with a prostitute

    April 5, 2018

  • Western slang: Buddy

    April 5, 2018

  • Western slang: Sleeping with a prostitute

    April 5, 2018

  • Western slang: Derogatory term for homosexual men

    April 5, 2018

  • Western slang: Prostitute

    April 5, 2018

  • Western slang: Prostitute

    April 5, 2018

  • Western slang for "Hurrah!"

    April 5, 2018

  • dialectal, British

    : confused, dazed

    April 5, 2018

  • īnferant. third-person plural present active subjunctive of īnferō

    April 5, 2018

  • In Irish and Scottish folklore, the Sluagh (Irish pronunciation: sɫuə, Scottish Gaelic: slˠ̪uaɣ, modern Irish spelling Slua, English: "horde, crowd") were the spirits of the restless dead.

    April 3, 2018

  • Etymology 1

    From Proto-Germanic *wazjaną, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wes-. Cognate with Old Saxon werian, Old High German werien, Old Norse verja.

    Verb

    werian

    to wear

    April 3, 2018

  • The Catherine Wheel, also known as the Breaking Wheel, was one of the most widely used torture devices during the medieval times in Europe. It was used to execute criminals and other accused people since the times of antiquity, although its use became more widespread during the medieval times.

    April 3, 2018

  • pross in British. (prɒz), prossie or prozzie (ˈprɒzɪ) slang. a prostitute. Collins English Dictionary.

    April 3, 2018

  • Gannin mad, mentally. -Geordie Dictionary : M-Q

    Selected words from Tyneside and the North East

    April 3, 2018

  • of, relating to, or characteristic of the demigod Triton; of, relating to, or characteristic of tritons.

    April 3, 2018

  • Apart from causality, beyond causality

    March 26, 2018

  • The power to infect existence.

    March 26, 2018

  • (noun) - A custom was formerly in vogue of rising early on Easter-day to see the sun "dance," the superstitious believing the sun really did dance on that day. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855

    March 16, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A young sodomite. --John Farmer's Vocabula Amatoria: A French-English Glossary of Words, Phrases, and Allusions Occurring in the Works of Rabelais, Voltaire, Molière, and Others, 1896 (2) From Latin corbita, a large ship for traffic, French corvette. --Hensleigh Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology, 1878

    March 16, 2018

  • (pronoun) - A courtier will say, "Let him do it himself," but the Cockney has it, "Let him do it his-self." Here the latter comes nearest to the truth, though both he and courtier are wrong, for the grammatical construction should be, "Let he do it his-self," or by a transposition of words, better and more energetically arranged, "Let he his-self do it." It must be allowed that the Londoner does not use this compounded pronoun in the mode before us from any sense of conviction. He has fortunately stumbled upon a part of the truth which the courtier has overleaped, as the nominative in the singular number is my-self, and not me-self. --Samuel Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language, c. 1803

    March 16, 2018

  • ADJ.

    pert. to theft; related to or consisting in stealing ...1742-3 rare

    March 16, 2018

  • to make a great noise ...1656 obs

    March 16, 2018

  • the act of impenetrating or the state of being impenetrated.

    March 8, 2018

  • (noun) - A moocher. Many city people visit their backwoods cousins only when strawberries are ripe to get enough free berries for a year's supply of jam. Ozarks. --Vance Randolph's and George Wilson's Down in the Holler, 1953

    February 18, 2018

  • (noun) - Peasant, shepherd. --Herbert Coleridge's Dictionary of the First, or Oldest Words in the English Language, 1863

    February 18, 2018

  • (verb) - (1) To calculate, reckon. --Walter Skeat's Student's Pastime, 1896 (2) Shortened from calcule. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1893 (3) He began to calke how the sonne was in Gemini. --Stephen Hawes' Pastime of Pleasure, 1509

    February 18, 2018

  • (adjective) - Imaginary; drawn or painted in the air. --William Grimshaw's Ladies' Lexicon and Parlour Companion, 1854

    February 13, 2018

  • (noun) - By summer's story, Shakespeare seems to have meant some gay fiction. --Edmond Malone's Plays of William Shakespeare, 1778

    February 13, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Spectacles. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908

    February 13, 2018

  • (adjective) - Dismal, gloomy, distressful; from Anglo-Saxon dreorig, sorrowful, Icelandic dreyrigr, gory. --Rev. James Stormonth's Dictionary of the English Language, 1884

    February 13, 2018

  • (verb) - To inherit the whole property; to get possession of the whole of anything; Eastern England. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855

    February 13, 2018

  • (verb/noun) - (1) To sprinkle or splash water upon. --C. Clough Robinson's Dialect of Leeds, 1862 (2) A splash of rain or mud. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905

    February 13, 2018

  • (noun) - Refuse, trash, as the smallest kind of potatoes, not fully grown, are called "mere drabloch." The same is applied to bad butcher-meat. Teutonic drabbe is rendered dregs, Belgium drabbig, muddy. Thus the term might be borrowed from liquors. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

    February 13, 2018

  • (adjective) - Encircled by the sea. --Richard Coxe's New Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, 1813

    February 13, 2018

  • (verb) - Noting a family resemblance; usually applied in the case of children to parents or other ancestors. We speak of seeing the "Folger look." --William Macy's Nantucket Scrap Basket, c. 1916

    February 12, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A diversion common enough at country wakes and fairs. The performance requires a large circle enclosed with ropes, which is occupied by as many persons as are permitted to play. All of these except one, who is the jingler, have their eyes blinded with handkerchiefs. The eyes of the jingler are not covered, but he holds a small bell in each hand, which he is obliged to keep ringing incessantly, so long as the play continues, which is commonly about twenty minutes, but sometimes is extended to half an hour. --Joseph Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, 1801 (2) His object was to elude the pursuit of his companions, and he won the prize if he was still free when the play ceased. It was an amusing sight to see the men trying to catch the jingler, running into each other's arms and catching every one but the right one. --Peter Ditchfield's Old English Sports, 1891

    February 12, 2018

  • (verb) - To be as a child when walking. --Walter Skeat's Glossary of Devonshire Words, 1896

    February 12, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Persons begging with sham licenses, pretending losses by fire. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796

    February 12, 2018

  • (verb) - Quarreling, or contending with a loud voice. Raising a wrow is exciting a quarrel and confusion in the streets. From wrawe, angry. --Robert Willan's List of Ancient Words of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1814

    February 12, 2018

  • (noun) - A loquacious person; a gossip. --Michael Traynor's English Dialect of Donegal, 1953

    February 12, 2018

  • (noun) - Rustle; any slight sound, as of a mouse. --Appleton Morgan's Study in the Warwickshire Dialect, 1900

    February 12, 2018

  • (adjective) - (1) Married. --B.E.'s New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, 1699 (2) Noozed, married, hanged. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796

    February 12, 2018

  • (noun) - A train of several cars which left St. John's on the eve of the 24th of May with trouters for the various ponds of their choice, dropping them off wherever they wished along the railway line and picking them up the following night to bring them back with their catches, hangovers, fly-bites, chills, etc. Newfoundland. --D.W. Prowse's Newfoundland Guide Book, 1911

    February 12, 2018

  • (noun) - A boundary mark in an unenclosed field. It is often a low post, thence called a dool-post; from Anglo-Saxon dælan. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830

    February 12, 2018

  • (verb/adjective) - (1) To knock with a dull sound, as with the fist in the back or ribs. Stupid, dizzy, or giddy, from an affection of the brain; said especially of sheep. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1897 (2) To stupefy. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830 (3) Stupefied. Dunt sheep, one that mopes about from a disorder in his head; Norfolk. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796

    February 12, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) One who habitually saunters about. From dander, to stroll, wander; to trifle, misspend one's time. To talk in a rambling, incoherent way. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905 (2) On the dander, on a drinking spree. --Michael Traynor's English Dialect of Donegal, 1953

    February 12, 2018

  • (noun) - This side of the grave. "The schoolmaster hain't got a friend on the flat side of the grave." --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun/verb) - The act of wasting time in bad company; immodest conduct; explained as denoting immodest behavior in Ayrshire. The latter part of the word is obviously from the verb to taigle, to detain, to hinder. Shall we suppose that the term is formed from the idea of a servant being hindered, or pretending to be so, in seeking for eggs? --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

    February 11, 2018

  • (verb) - To kill, destroy. Evidently from guillotine. --Thomas Darlington's Folk-Speech of South Cheshire, 1887

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - A young turkey, fit for the table but not fully grown--a turkey-poult. In Scottish, pout is a young partridge or moor-fowl. From French poulet, a pullet. --Edward Moor's Suffolk Words and Phrases, 1823

    February 11, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Loaded dice are called high and low men, or high and low fulhams, by Ben Jonson and other writers of his time, either because they were made at Fulham in London's West End or from that place being the resort of sharpers. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796

    February 11, 2018

  • False or feigned sophistication.

    February 11, 2018

  • (interjection) - An interjection. This is a word, like others of the same class, the precise meaning of which is not easy to define. --James Jennings' Dialect of Somersetshire, 1869

    February 11, 2018

  • (verb) - To treat and exhibit as an object of interest. Originally to take visitors to see the lions formerly kept at the Tower of London. Hence lion-hunter, one given to lionizing people, popularized by Dickens in Mr. and Mrs. Leo Hunter in Pickwick Papers. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - The art of secret writing, characters, or cyphers known only to persons that correspond with one another. Steganographist, an artist in private writing. --Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary, 1749

    February 11, 2018

  • (verb) - I'll do it, and chance the ducks, meaning "I'll do it and take my chances," is in reference to a boat's crew arrayed in clean white jumpers or "ducks" ready for inspection when it is discovered that some duty involving the possible soiling of their garments has been neglected. They accordingly say, "We must do it, and chance the ducks"--that is, run the risk of our ducks being splashed. --A. Wallace's Popular Sayings Dissected, 1895

    February 11, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Legitimate blows given in certain games. --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A salve which was supposed to cure the wound, being applied to the weapon that made it. --Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755 (2) The direction, "Bind the wound and grease the nail," is still common when a wound has been given with a rusty nail. Sir Kenelm Digby says the salve is sympathetic, and quotes several instances to prove that "as the sword is treated, the wound inflicted by it feels similar. Thus, if the instrument is kept wet the wound will feel cool; if held to the fire it will feel hot." --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1887

    (noun) - A salve which was supposed to cure the wound, being applied to the weapon that made it.

    --Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755

    February 11, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - When two brothers marry two sisters, the children are known as double cousins. Such relationships are very common in the Ozarks, and are considered somehow significant. In referring to each other these people seldom say simply, "He's my cousin," but rather, "We're double cousins." The word cousin may indicate very distant relationship, but own cousin always means first cousin. --Vance Randolph's and George Wilson's Down in the Holler, 1953

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - Nimbleness, agility; 1400s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1897

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - The human skin. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940

    February 11, 2018

  • (verb/noun) - A capital punishment inflicted on a malefactor on the seashore by laying him bound on the sands till the next full tide carried him away. From Norman falese, sands, rocks, cliffs. --John Bouvier's Law Dictionary, 1839

    February 11, 2018

  • (verb/noun) - (1) To bewitch by a certain evil influence of the eye. --Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary, 1749 (2) Reginald Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft 1584 telleth us that our English people in Ireland were much given to this idolatry in Queen Elizabeth's time insomuch that, there being a disease amongst their cattle that grew blind, they did commonly execute people for it, calling them eye-biting witches. --Thomas Ady's Candle in the Dark; or, A Treatise Concerning the Nature of Witches and Witchcraft, 1656

    (verb) - To bewitch an animal with the evil eye. Northern England. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855

    February 11, 2018

  • (adverb) - To come home by the villages, to be drunk; a provincial expression. If, on the other hand, one comes home by the fields, one has no opportunity for drinking. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922

    February 11, 2018

  • (adjective) - Superstitiously afraid. This is the word of which eerie is a later form. The Anglo-Saxon form is earh. Aberdeenshire. --Walter Skeat's Student's Pastime, 1896

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - A policy practised by a nation or party in politics of dabbling in minor acts in a hostile manner while they are unable to deal with the larger issues. It was first applied in 1898 to the policy of France in reference to the conflicting colonial interests of that country and Great Britain. The Times quoted this as "a policy of pin-pricks," which forthwith became a political phrase. --J.B. Lippincott's Everyday Phrases Explained, 1913

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - A rude, violent person, who pulls others about; whence the common name for a dog who is a good ratter. --Charles Mackay's Lost Beauties of the English Language, 1874

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - A calfskin stuffed with straw in the rude similitude of a calf, similar enough to deceive the imperfect perception organs of a cow. At milking time the tulchan, with head duly bent, was set as if to suck. The fond cow, looking round, fancied that her calf was busy and that all was right, and so gave her milk freely, which the cunning maid was straining in white abundance into the pail all the while. King James's Scotch bishops were, by the Scotch people, derisively called "tulchan bishops." --Thomas Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, 1845

    February 11, 2018

  • (adjective) - (1) Almost choked or stifled. --T. Ellwood Zell's Popular Encyclopedia, 1871 (2) Quackle, to interrupt breathing; to suffocate; to choke. East Anglia. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - A medicine good for the headache. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - In rhetoric, imitation of the voice or gestures of another. --Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - Properly, a locked-up chamber in which articles of dress, stores, etc. are kept; by extension, a privy. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - A young or small child; a brat. Often used depreciatively, and formerly as a synonym of bastard. Possibly a corruption of German bänkling, bastard, from bank, bench, i.e. a child begotten on a bench, and not in the marriage bed; 1500s-1800s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - An additional dish to the regular dinner. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - A volley of abusive language; indistinct drawling utterance. --Georgina Jackson's Shropshire Word-Book, 1879

    February 11, 2018

  • (adjective) - Of doubtful quality; questionable. --Francis Robinson's Glossary of Whitby, 1855

    February 11, 2018

  • (verb) - (1) To sleep. In the old pugilistic days, a man knocked down, or "out of time," was said to be "sent to dorse." But whether because he was senseless, or because he lay on his back, is not known, though most likely the latter. Formerly spelt dorse; from Gaelic dosal, slumber. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887 (2) To dorse with a woman signifies to sleep with her. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - A means of livelihood; a working for one's bread. From "gain-bread." --C.A.M. Fennell's Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases, 1964

    February 11, 2018

  • (verb) - A whimsical corruption of the word concur, substituting dog for cur as equivalent. --Robert Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859

    February 11, 2018

  • (adjective) - Furious or mad. We yet retain in some parts of England the word wodnes for furiousness or madness. --Richard Verstegan's Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 1605

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) Plague, pestilence; from Old English manncwealm; c. 900-1300s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908 (2) Slaughter of men; from Robert of Gloucester. --Herbert Coleridge's Dictionary of the Oldest Words in the English Language, 1863

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - Force; rush; violence. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900

    February 11, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) Sometimes a real horse, sometimes the figure of one cut out and carried by the sportsman. It being found that wild fowl, which would take alarm at the appearance of a man, would remain quiet when they saw only a horse approaching, advantage was taken of it, for the shooter to conceal himself behind a real or artificial horse to get within shot of his game. --Robert Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859 (2) To supply the want of a stalking-horse you may make one of pieces of old canvas, which you must form into the shape of an old horse, with the head bending downwards, as if he grazed. --Gervase Markham's English Husbandman, 1615

    February 11, 2018

  • Old word for ewe.

    February 9, 2018

  • (adjective) - Anciently, when a person was placed in a coffin, he was said to be "chested." Chaucer has, "He is now dead and nailed in his chest." In the heading of the 50th chapter of Genesis, the word is used in reference to Joseph, of whom it is said, "He dieth and is chested." --Eliezer Edwards' Words, Facts, and Phrases, 1882

    February 9, 2018

  • (adjective) - In secrecy; hid, as from creditors. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of East Yorkshire, 1788

    February 9, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - The pieces running up between the fingers of gloves. --Angelina Parker's Supplement to the Oxfordshire Glossary, 1881

    February 9, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) The toes of a man who turns his feet inward. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887 (2) The toes of a man who walks duck-footed. --John Farmer's and W.E. Henley's Slang and Its Analogues, 1890-1904

    February 9, 2018

  • (interjection) - A word of command to horses in a team meaning "go to the left." This was horse-language in the 14th century of Chaucer. Heit scot and Heit broc are names still given to cart-horses. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830

    February 8, 2018

  • (noun) - The pillory. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796

    February 8, 2018

  • (verb) - When a person gets the worst of a bargain, he is said to have "bought the rabbit." From an old story about a man selling a cat to a foreigner for a rabbit. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887

    February 8, 2018

  • (verb/noun) - To parboil. A slight boiling. If meat seems likely to be tainted before it can be dressed, the cook must "give it a plow" to check the progress of decay and, if possible, keep it a little while at stand. In John Ray's South and East Country Words 1674 the same word is written play. He speaks of a "playing heat," and says that in Norfolk it is pronounced plaw. It may be from some French term of cookery, in books not easily accessible, or it may have descended to us from Anglo-Saxon pleoh danger. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830

    February 8, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) In the North of England and in Scotland, a midwife is called a howdy, or howdy-wife. I take howdy to be a diminutive of how, and to be derived from this almost obsolete opinion of old women. I once heard an etymology of howdy to the following effect: "How d'ye"--midwives being great gossipers. --John Brand's Observations on Popular Antiquities, 1813 (2) Brand sneers at the derivation from "'how d'ye'--midwives being great gossipers," but I think that which he supplies is far more ridiculous. I have not been fortunate enough to discover any original to my satisfaction, but I may perhaps be permitted to observe, in defence of what has been so much ridiculed, that "how d'ye" is a natural enough salutation to a sick woman from the midwife, who, by the way, is called in German die Wehmutter, or "oh dear mother." --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825

    February 8, 2018

  • (noun/verb) - In Law, the receiving of a person into friendly custody who otherwise must have gone to prison. It differs from bail because a person is, in this case, to be at large from the day of his being mainprised. --Daniel Fenning's Royal English Dictionary, 1775

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - This expression (from French, lit de justice) literally denoted the seat or throne upon which the King of France was accustomed to sit when personally present in Parliament, and from this original meaning the expression came, in course of time, to signify the Parliament itself. Under the ancient monarchy of France, a bed of justice denoted a solemn session of the king in Parliament. According to the principle of the old French constitution the authority of the Parliament, being derived entirely from the crown, ceased when the king was present. Consequently, all ordinances enrolled at a bed of justice were acts of the royal will, and of more authority than decisions of Parliament. --William Walsh's Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1900

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - A round, hollow metallic ball having a neck with a slender pipe opening to the ball which, being partly filled with water and laid on the fire, the steam or vapourous air is forced out with great noise and violence. It is used to blow the fire, and in Italy as a cure for smoky chimneys. --John Coxe's Medical Dictionary, 1817

    February 7, 2018

  • l (adjective) - Cruel by being too virtuous. --John Phin's Shakespeare Cyclopædia and New Glossary, 1902

    February 7, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - The garments or linen worn next to the skin. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - Sympathetic powder (Pulvis sympatheticus) of Sir Kenelm Digby, was composed of calcined sulphate of iron, prepared in a particular manner. It was long supposed to be able to cure a wound if applied to the weapon that inflicted it, or even to a portion of the bloody clothes. --Robley Dunglison's Dictionary of Medical Science, 1844

    February 7, 2018

  • (adjective) - Squeamish, ready to be sick at the sight of food. --Francis Robinson's Glossary of Yorkshire Words and Phrases, 1855

    February 7, 2018

  • (verb) - To put ginger up a horse's fundament, and formerly a live eel, to make him lively and carry his tail well. A forfeit is incurred by any horse-dealer's servant who shall shew a horse without first feaguing him. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796

    February 7, 2018

  • (adjective) - Miserly; covetous. --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - A doctor who buys bodies from grave-riflers. --Eric Partidge's Dictionary of the Underworld, 1950

    February 7, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Body, arms, back. --A.V. Judges' Elizabethan Underworld, 1930

    February 7, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - The sun's rays, as they sometimes appear in showery weather, popularly believed to suck up the water from the earth into the sun, there to be converted into rain, and held to be a sign of coming showers. --Georgina Jackson's Shropshire Word-Book, 1879

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - A scarecrow. --F.T. Dinsdale's Glossary of Provincial Words Used in Teesdale in the County of Durham, 1849

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - A little extempore bed by a fireside for a sick person. --Samuel Pegge's Alphabet of Kenticisms, 1736

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - A greenish oil obtained from earthworms, used as a remedy for earache. --William Whitney's Century Dictionary, 1889-1891

    February 7, 2018

  • (adjective) - Applied to a couple whose banns of marriage have been proclaimed three times in church. Also axed-out. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900

    February 7, 2018

  • (adjective) - (1) Affected with weakness of nerves. The word seems to be a corruption of nervous, and therefore cut out of its proper place, but in point of fact, the word nervous is a mere modern abuse. Mr. Pegge recommends nervish to be substituted for nervous, to signify weakness of the nerves. And by all means, let it be put down to our credit that we have anticipated his recommendation by many years. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830 (2) To preserve a distinction when we speak of such a man, and of the disorder by which his strength is impaired, we should rather say a nervish man, and a nervish disorder, which termination conforms with similar words, such as waspish, devilish, feverish--all expressive of bad qualities or disordered habits. --Samuel Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language, 1844

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - A young upstart. --Edward Slow's Glossary of Wiltshire Words, Used by the Peasantry in the Neighborhood of Salisbury, c. 1900

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - Male genital organ. Central Pennsylvania. --Harold Wentworth's American Dialect Dictionary, 1944

    February 7, 2018

  • (verb) - To splice two pieces of wood together. From Jutland Danish at skarre ved, to join two pieces together. --Rev. M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - To take Dutch leave, to desert without official permission. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940

    February 7, 2018

  • (adjective) - (1) Shaped like a breast or teat. --W. Tarton's Medical Glossary in Which the Various Branches of Medicine are Deduced from Their Original Languages, 1802 (2) Related to mammifer, an animal which has breasts or paps to suckle its young; from Latin mamma, a breast, and fero, to bear. --Robert Hunter's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1894

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - A small cushion or pillow. In surgery, a small olive-shaped mass of lint used for plugging deep wounds; diminutive of pulvinus, cushion. --Sydenham Society's Lexicon of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 1897

    February 7, 2018

  • (verb) - To climb up the bole trunk of a tree by the muscular action of the arms, thighs, and legs. --Robert Willan's List of Ancient Words of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1814

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - The lower gut of a deer. --John Bullokar's English Expositor, 1616

    February 7, 2018

  • (verb) - To tie a handkerchief around a man's arm to designate that he is to play the part of a female at a dance where there are not enough ladies to go around. He is then said to dance "lady fashion," and his reward is being allowed to set with the ladies between dances. This privilege, however, quite often makes him feel as out of place as a cow on a front porch. --Ramon Adams' Western Words: A Dictionary of the Range, Cow Camp, and Trail, 1946

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - A beverage compounded of buffalo gall and water in the proportion of a gill to a pint, the medicinal virtue of which was thought to have been in an exact ratio to its filthy taste. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889

    February 7, 2018

  • (verb) - To startle; to confuse. Also used as an adjective for confounded. --John Farmer and W.E. Henley's Slang and Its Analogues, 1890-1904

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - The drinking glasses of the Middle Ages, made at Venice, were said to break into shivers if poison were put into them. Venice glass, from its excellency, became a synonym for perfection. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - A term of ridicule for a citizen. In Henry VIII's time, flat round caps were the height of fashion but, as usual, when their date was worn out, they became ridiculous. Citizens of London continued to wear them long after they were generally disused, and were often satirized for it. --Robert Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859

    February 7, 2018

  • (interjection/adjective) - An expression of intimacy. To be hail-fellow with anyone, to be on such a footing as to greet him with "hail-fellow" at meeting. --Robert Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859

    February 7, 2018

  • (verb) - To laugh, or rather to have a countenance expressive of laughter, without laughing out. From Icelandic flyra. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun/verb) - (1) A person who entraps or decoys others into actions or positions which may be to his advantage and to their ruin or loss. Also applied to an animal. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1926 (2) A snare; from Trapani, a part of Italy where our ships, being insidiously invited on the reign of Queen Elizabeth, were unjustly detained. --Daniel Fenning's Royal English Dictionary, 1775

    February 7, 2018

  • (verb) - To smart violently, as a burn or recent wound. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of East Yorkshire, 1788

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - A company of people, especially a disorderly or vulgar crowd; a mob, rabble; Scotland, Ireland, and Northumberland. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - The shirt of a railroad boomer laborer was often given this title because as an itinerant worker he traveled light and supposedly wore the same shirt for thousands of miles. --Marjorie Tallman's Dictionary of American Folklore, 1959

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - A white hat with a black mourning hatband, probably because a butcher would rather not wear a black hat. White hats and black bands have, however, become genteel ever since the late Prince Consort Albert patronized them. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - That species of intimidation practised by masters on their servants, when the latter are compelled to vote as their masters please. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855

    February 7, 2018

  • (adjective) - Well done, especially an article of food. --Maurice Weseen's Dictionary of American Slang, 1902

    February 7, 2018

  • (interjection) - (1) A word used in expressions of surprise, chiefly by older people. "What the farrups are ye at?" --Alfred Easther's Glossary of Almondbury and Huddersfield, 1883 (2) Ferrups, an exclamation of mild imprecation, especially in the phrase, "by the ferrups!" Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Derwentwater. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905

    February 7, 2018

  • (adjective/adverb) - Cheerful; in good spirits; friendly; hospitable. As an adverb, cheerfully. Renfrewshire, Kirkcudbright. --Mairi Robinson's Concise Scots Dictionary, 1985

    February 7, 2018

  • (adjective/adverb) - Out of harness and the working habit. A horse has the collar slipped over its neck when put to work. --Trench Johnson's Phrases and Names: Their Origins and Meanings, 1906

    February 7, 2018

  • (verb) - To swoon. --Walter Skeat's Glossary of Devonshire Words, 1896

    February 7, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) In Papal times in Britain, it was considered an act of ill-luck for a newly-married couple to retire for the night until the bridal bed had been blessed. --Edwin and Mona Radford's Encyclopædia of Superstitions, 1949 (2) The pride of the clergy and the bigotry of the laity was such that newly-married people were made to wait till midnight after the marriage day before they would pronounce a benediction, unless they were handsomely paid for it, and the couple durst not undress without it, on pain of excommunication. --Francis Blomefield's Topographical History of Norfolk, c. 1752

    February 7, 2018

  • (verb/noun) - The act of exhaling a mouthful of smoke and then inhaling it through the nose. Considered ultrasophisticated by teenagers. --Harold Wentworth's Dictionary of American Slang, 1960

    February 7, 2018

  • Said of a stream when full to the brim. --A. Porson's Quaint Words and Sayings of South Worcestershire, 1875

    February 6, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - (1) Small fragments of very thin things, as of dry leaves or dust of tobacco; from Norwegian flus, Swedish flisa, a scale, fragment. --Hensleigh Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology, 1878 (2) Very small flakes in bottled liquors. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830

    February 6, 2018

  • (verb) - To shuffle cards. --John Farmer and W.E. Henley's Slang and Its Analogues, 1904

    February 6, 2018

  • (adjective) - Entirely right. --Maurice Weseen's Dictionary of American Slang, 1934

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - In a canal, an overfall or weir. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - A dull-witted pedant; a foolish pretender to learning; from Nicholas Dorbellus (c. 1400-1475), a professor of scholastic philosophy at Poitiers, and a follower of Duns Scotus, whose name gave us dunce. --Joseph Shipley's Dictionary of Early English, 1955

    February 6, 2018

  • (verb) - To pilfer stealthfully. It seems to combine the meanings of English slang crib and Cheshire creem, to hide. --Thomas Darlington's The Folk-Speech of South Cheshire, 1887

    February 6, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Fireworks. --J. Drummond Robertson's Glossary of Archaic Gloucestershire Words, 1890

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - The weight formerly used in the navy, by which the purser--an officer appointed by the lords of the admirality to take charge of the provisions and slops of a ship of war, and to see that they were carefully distributed--retained an eighth for "waste," and the men received only seven-eighths of what was supplied by the government. --Admiral William Smyth's Sailor's Word-Book, 1867

    February 6, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Remnants of food; broken meat; remains of a feast. --Rev. M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - Drunkard's nose, a nose with "grog blossoms" or a "copper nose," such as is possessed by an "admiral of the red." --Albert Barrère's Argot and Slang Dictionary, 1911

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - For cutting of meat, persons of rank kept a carver, who was designated the scissor, or carptor. --Eliezer Edwards' Words, Facts, and Phrases, 1882

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - A small child or diminutive person. Fairies were formerly called urchins. --Thomas Sternberg's Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire, 1851

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - Gentry. --Granville Leveson-Gower's Glossary of Surrey Words, 1893

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - A trick; a hoax; a swindle. --Francis Taylor's Folk-Speech of South Lancashire, 1901

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - As much as can be grasped with the foot. --Noah Webster's New International Dictionary, 1952

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - A Londoner; Chaucer. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - This word, as far as I know, only occurs in the two following phrases. "As hard as a brazzil," is an expression of frequent occurrence to denote any kind of unusual hardness. If, for example, the bread is overbaked it is said to be baked "as hard as a brazzil," or if the housewife cannot break her Bath brick a cake of abrasive clay used for household polishing easily, she exclaims, "It's as hard as a brazzil." The other expression is "as fond as a brazzil." Here the word brazzil probably means a low, impudent girl, in which sense it is sometimes used still. -- Rev. M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892

    February 6, 2018

  • (adjective) - As sound as a fish; thoroughly sound or healthy; early 1200s-1600. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - A lecture; a rustic word from lere, learning, lesson, lore. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850

    February 6, 2018

  • (verb/noun) - To vex; to be in a feaze is to be in a state of excitement; still commonly colloquial in the States, especially in Virginia and the South. It was used formerly in the same sense as tease, as in teasing wool, but more particularly applied to curry-combing. "I'll pheeze you," says Christophoro Sly in The Taming of the Shrew meaning that he will vex the worthy hostess by staying--like teasel burrs in wool. Another authority regards it as derived from the Anglo-Saxon fysan, used to denote the rapid and noisy movement of water, and from which we get the modern fizz. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - Mock modesty of the Western states requires that a male turkey should be so called. --James Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms, 1877

    February 6, 2018

  • (adjective) - Wild; excited. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - A mixture intended to revive flat beer. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - Dry, withering weather. The wind, when such prevails, blows out of the east and northeast, just as it blew on the prophet Jonah when it withered his gourd. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824

    February 6, 2018

  • (adjective) - (1) Surfeited. --J.F. Palmer's Devonshire Dialect Glossary, 1837 (2) Given to gluttony, overeating, &c. --James Barclay's Complete and Universal Dictionary of the English Language, 1848 The word is related to Latin crapula, which meant excessive eating and imbibing, along with the unpleasant aftereffects. Crapula was itself adapted from a Greek forerunner.

    February 6, 2018

  • (verb) - An admonition to one inclined to exaggerate or use explosive language. The allusion is to beer. "A pint of beer, Miss, and draw it mild." --Edwin Radford's Encyclopædia of Phrases and Origins, 1945

    February 6, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - A term for specie, or money. It would appear to have some connection with Dutch spaunde, "chips," slang for money; and there is a word oolik, bad, wretched. The term probably originated in New York in perversion of these words. This term has become common among English turfites. --Albert Barrère's Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant, 1889

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) One who keeps a knick-knackatory; a dealer in knick-knacks. Knick-knackery, knick-knacks collectively. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908 (2) Nicknackitorian, a dealer in all manner of curiosities, such as Egyptian mummies, Indian implements, antique shields, helmets, &c. --London's Annual Register, 1802

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - A female American; a woman of American birth. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A light flaw which suddenly careens a vessel and passes off. --Admiral William Smyth's Sailor's Word-Book, 1867 (2) This phrase for a little wind, hardly sufficient for moving a sailing ship, arises from the following legend: Eric, King of Sweden, was so familiar with evil spirits that whichever way he turned his cap the wind would blow. Hence, his cap was said to be full of wind. --Edwin Radford's Encyclopædia of Phrases and Origins, 1945

    February 6, 2018

  • (verb) - To lock. Unchubb, to unlock. From the well known make of lock by Charles Chubb (1772-1846), English locksmith. --Paul Tempest's Lag's Lexicon: A Dictionary of the English Prison, 1950 (where is the definition that it's an erection from? Twitter? Really?)

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - Opposition to the assertion that the persons from time to time reported to have died aged a century or more had really attained to that age. --Edward Lloyd's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1895

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - The length of a cock's stride. "The days are getting a cockstride longer." --Thomas Darlington's Folk-Speech of South Cheshire, 1887

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - A fourth part of a penny; any very small thing. --Joseph Worcester's Dictionary of the English Language, 1881

    February 6, 2018

  • (adjective) - To be for all waters, to be able to turn to any occupation, like a fish that can live in either fresh or salt water. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922

    February 6, 2018

  • (adjective) - Strange, as an unkard place. A servant is unkard on his first going to a fresh servitude. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of East Yorkshire, 1788

    February 6, 2018

  • (verb) - I cannot do-withall, I cannot help it. This phrase is not uncommon in early writers. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - The action or pastime of riding on bob-sleighs. Bobbing is carried out either on bobs (five passengers) or boblets (three passengers). --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888

    February 6, 2018

  • (adjective) - Pertaining to the urine of horses; hippuric acid, an acid obtained from the urine of horses; from Greek hippos horse, and ouron, urine. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - A noise, an uproar. Devonshire and Cornwall. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - An instrument for measuring the distance which a wheel rolls over a road; an odometer or perambulator. --William Whitney's Century Dictionary, 1889

    February 6, 2018

  • (adjective) - To turn cat in pan is a proverbial expression signifying a changing of sides in religion or politics. It has been suggested that it should be cate, the old word for cake, which being baked and consequently turned in the pan aptly elucidates the meaning of the proverb. --William Toone's Etymological Dictionary of Obsolete Words, 1832

    February 6, 2018

  • (verb) - To hold a merry meeting, with noise and riot, but without doing injury to anyone. It seems generally to include the idea of a wasteful use of food and of intemperate use of strong drink. Could we suppose that the proper pronunciation were guleravage it might be derived from French gueule, the mouth, the throat, also the stomach, conjoined with the verb already mentioned; to waste, to gormandize. --John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 1808

    February 6, 2018

  • (adjective) - Held up by a woman; an excuse for being late on the job. Pacific Northwest. --Walter McCulloch's Woods Words: A Comprehensive Dictionary of Loggers' Terms, 1958

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - Great quantity of rain. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) Food, familiarly. --C. Clough Robinson's Glossary of Words Pertaining to the Dialect of Mid-Yorkshire, 1876 (2) Materials to support the belly. --John Ash's Dictionary of the English Language, 1775

    February 6, 2018

  • (noun) - The science of calculating nativities, or predicting the future events of life from the stars predominant at birth. --Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - A skirmish or fighting between two or more. It is oft-times confounded with assalt. But they differ in that an assalt is only a wrong to the party, but an affray may also be without word or blow given, as if a man shew himself furnished with armour or weapons not usually worn, it may strike fear into others unarmed. Of the French affres, a fright. --Thomas Blount's Law Dictionary and Glossary, 1717

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun/verb) - (1) A soft, pulpy substance. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855 (2) To squeeze, press; to beat, crush, or trample into a soft mass. Hence jammocked, worn out, exhausted. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - Any food mixture of unknown ingredients. West Virginia, noted 1928. --Harold Wentworth's American Dialect Dictionary, 1944

    February 5, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - (1) Spectacles. --R. Pearse Chope's The Dialect of Hartland, Devonshire, 1891 (2) Sparticles, spectacles. --Patrick Devine's Folklore of Newfoundland in Old Words, Phrases, and Expressions, 1937

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - In Newcastle, treacle made hard by boiling. Called in other places in the North clag-candy, lady's taste, slittery, tom trot, and treacle ball. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - An inhabitant of Connecticut; late 1700s. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940

    February 5, 2018

  • (verb) - To cheat; to defraud. Similar in origin to such words as burke, boycott, and bogus. It is now classed as slang in England but for a long period was much used by standard English writers. In America however, the word is still looked upon as orthodox and is applied to all kinds of fraudulent dealing and deceit. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - This odd mode of expressing pleasure, which seems to be taken from the practice of animals who, in a playful mood, bite each other's ears, is very common in our old dramatists. "I will bite thee by the ear." Romeo and Juliet. --Rev. Alexander Dyce's Glossary to the Works of Shakespeare, 1902

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A state of extreme carefulness approaching to miserliness. --Rev. M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892 (2) A state of want or deficiency; poverty. Cumberland. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - Coughing and breaking wind backwards at the same time. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - A grave or gloomy expression of the countenance; 1500s-1700s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901

    February 5, 2018

  • (adjective) - Thick, mouldy, as beer or vinegar when stale. --John Akerman's Glossary of Provincial Words and Phrases in Wiltshire, 1842

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - A cross-bowman. --John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 1808

    February 5, 2018

  • (adjective) - Half-mad; sorely teased. --Walter Skeat's Glossary of Devonshire Words, 1896

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) A human stallion; a fellow who debauches many country girls. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824 (2) From kintra, country, and cooser, a stallion. --John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 1879 revision

    February 5, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Trousers buttoned breeches-fashion, having the flap, not the fly, front. Warwickshire. --G.F. Northall's Folk-Phrases of Four Counties: Gloucestershire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire, 1894

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - Hazard at sea. --Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - Beds collectively, especially in a hospital. How long will it be before the little job of putting on a shirt button is called sewage? --Eric Partridge's Chamber of Horrors: A Glossary of Official Jargon, Both English and American, 1952

    February 5, 2018

  • (adjective) - Having a hoarseness or continuous cough. From German. --F.T. Dinsdale's Glossary of Provincial Words Used in Teasdale, Durham, 1849

    February 5, 2018

  • (adjective) - (1) Within Lancashire, to gawm is to understand or comprehend, and a man is said to gawm that which he can hold in his hand. For this reason, a person is said there to be gawmless when his fingers are so cold and frozen that he has not proper use of them. --Rev. John Watson's Uncommon Words Used in Halifax, 1775 (2) Heedless; careless; inattentive. Senseless; vacant; lubberly. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905

    February 5, 2018

  • (adjective/adverb) - Out of all restraint. Derived from the exclamation "ho!"--used to stop the combat at a tournament. --William Toone's Etymological Dictionary of Obsolete Words, 1832

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - A term of endearment addressed to a cow, the common call for a cow being cush-cush. --Rev. M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) An inclination or fondness for a person of the opposite sex. --R. Pearse Chope's Dialect of Hartland Devonshire, 1891 (2) Simmithy, to look after admiringly; to pay attention to. Also written simathy. Northwest Devonshire. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905

    February 5, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Sleeping accommodation without board. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - Throwing with quads metal pieces of type. One takes up the quads, shakes them, and throws them after the manner of throwing dice. When the number of quads with the nicks appearing uppermost are counted, the highest thrower being the winner. --John Southward's Dictionary of Typography, 1875

    February 5, 2018

  • (noun) - One who speaks through the teeth. --Edward Lloyd's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1895

    February 5, 2018

  • (adjective) - (1) Of or pertaining to laughter; from Greek gelastikos, inclined to laugh. From Greek gelos, laughter, and skopeo, to see. --Edward Lloyd's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1895 (2) Geloscopy, divination performed by means of laughter; divining any person's qualities or character by observation of the manner of his laughter. --Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary, 1736

    February 4, 2018

  • (noun) - The ordinary vegetable or fruit market, in contradistinction to a meat or fish market. --R. Pearse Chope's Dialect of Hartland, Devonshire, 1891

    February 4, 2018

  • (noun) - The barbarous practice of throwing at cocks, formerly a custom at Shrovetide. This unmanly pastime is, I fear, not entirely abolished in some parts of England. Query--if the word sqwoilin is from cwellan, to kill? Sqwoilin is also used for throwing. --John Akerman's Glossary of Provincial Words and Phrases in Wiltshire, 1842

    February 4, 2018

  • (pl. noun) - Wherein the disease comes to its crisis, the odd days and 14th especially. --Elisha Coles' English Dictionary, 1713

    February 4, 2018

  • (noun) - A species of insanity in which the patient evinces a rage for reciting poetry. From Greek metreon, metre, and mainomai, to be insane. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850

    February 4, 2018

  • (adjective) - A suggested explanation of a person's stupidity. It was formerly believed that the scent of the flowering bean induced stupidity in the recipient of it. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922

    February 4, 2018

  • (noun) - A peculiarly shaped kiln belonging to the Customs, and situated near the London docks, in which are collected contraband goods, as tobacco, cigars, tea, &c. which have been smuggled, till a sufficient quantity has been accumulated, when the whole is set fire to and consumed. --Robert Hunter's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1894

    February 4, 2018

  • (verb) - (1) To stretch or expand; to lay out a corpse; from Saxon streccan. Streeking-board, a board on which the limbs of the deceased are stretched out and composed. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825 (2) Streeker, a layer-out of the dead. --Francis Robinson's Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Whidby Yorkshire, 1876

    February 4, 2018

  • (verb) - To continue determinedly on one's course; a camping metaphor. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922

    February 4, 2018

  • “The laqui is a strip of leather, five or six feet long, to each end of which is fastened a stone about two pounds weight. The huntsman, who is on horseback, holds one of these in his hands, and whirling the other, slings the string at the animal in so dexterous a manner that the stones form a tight knot around his legs" - Books on Google Play

    Spanish America: Or A Descriptive, Historical, and Geographical Account of the Dominions of Spain in the Western Hemisphere, Continental and Insular; Illustrated by a Map of Spanish North America, and the West-India Islands; a Map of Spanish South America, and an Engraving, Representing the Comparative Altitudes of the Mountains in Those Regions, Volume 2

    February 3, 2018

  • (noun) - In the Ptolemaic system, the moon was fixed in the innermost of nine spheres which revolved around the earth. The inflected genitive moon's sphere occurs several times in early plays such as A Midsummer Night's Dream. --C.H. Herford's Notes on the Works of Shakespeare, 1902

    January 31, 2018

  • On Mid-Lent Sunday the Welsh customarily drank braggot, a meadlike beverage made of "spiced and honeyed ale." According to John Ray's North Country Words (1691), braggot is derived from the Welsh "brag, signifying malt, and gots, a honeycomb."

    January 31, 2018

  • (noun) - (1) Ale given to the older workmen by an apprentice or new hand as an entrance fee on taking his place amongst them. --Georgina Jackson's Shropshire Word-Book, 1879 (2) An old custom amongst miners, when a man enters first into work, to pay his first day's wages for ale. --William Hooson's Miner's Dictionary, 1747 (3) A stranger will generally be asked to "stand his foot-ale." --A. Benoni Evans' Leicestershire Words, Phrases, and Proverbs, 1881 (4) Drink given by the seller to the buyer at a cattle fair. --D. Nicholson's Manuscript Collection of Caithness Scotland Words (5) A fine paid by a young man when found courting out of his own district. --William Dickinson's Glossary of the Cumberland Dialect, 1899

    January 31, 2018

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  • Calm down a bit. If you post too many comments in a row it floods them off the Community page before anyone actually gets a chance to see them.

    April 23, 2018