Barber’s Sign: A standing pole & two wash balls.Said also to belong to Captain Jones’s company. One can sense Grose’s irritation at the enforced bowdlerization of his great lexicographical project in the closing words of the 1788 preface: “it is hoped this work will now be found as little offensive to delicacy as the nature of it would admit.” We propose, therefore, to correct this prudery, and publish here a selection of Grose’s unpublished additions: Thus, such terms as were “pointed out as rather indecent or indelicate … have been either omitted, softened, or their explanations taken from books long sanctioned with general approbation, and admitted into the seminaries for the education of youth…“ (1788 Preface).Ĭertainly it was not Grose’s own sense of personal propriety that prompted these removals, as can be seen in the many obscene terms (ranging from the basic, “fun thruster: a sodomite”, to the bizarre, “nonsense: a girl playing with a dead man’s penis”) being continually added in manuscript, and only afterwards marked for expurgation with a rueful red cross.
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The reading public, however, whose tastes were shifting away from the bawdy sensibilities of 18 th-century Grub Street towards the primmer and more prudish mores of the 19 th century, did not see eye-to-eye with Grose on the matter.
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In the preface to the first edition, Grose had attempted to excuse such terms as “commodity: a woman’s commodity, the private parts of a modest woman, and the public parts of a prostitute”, and “burning shame: a lighted candle stuck into the private parts of a woman, certainly not intended by Nature for a candlestick”, on the grounds that they “compensate by their wit, for the trespass committed on decorum”. This is because the book has been extensively bowdlerized there are almost 100 expurgations all marked by a red cross. What makes this copy particularly valuable are the many terms added here that you will not find in the 1788 edition. of Sandwich” (John Montagu, 4th Earl Sandwich, 1718-92).Īll the aforementioned contributions, however, are to be found printed in the second edition. Thence called Tangierines” numerous secret societies and clubs, including the Kit Cat Club, are named and “sandwich” gets a timely mention, as “ham, tongue, or some other salted meat, cut thin & put between two slices of bread & butter, said to be a favorite morsel with the E. Most prominently, many of Grose’s additions offer an insight into life in late 18th-century London: “Comus’s Court” is “a social meeting held at the Half Moon Tavern, Cheapside” “Tangier” is “a Room in Newgate where Debtors are Confined. An East India Term”, indicate the influence of empire on the language. Some phrases, like “One of the Blue Squadron: any person having a cross of the black breed. Some have changed in modern usage: ”Hoity Toity: a Hoity Toity wench, a giddy thoughtless ramping girl”. Originally a sweet cake in the shape of a heart.” Some are highly expressive, but now almost lost, like ”Rantipole: riotous, irregular”, or “Knight of the Trencher: a great eater” (which Grose, who made much of the pun in his name, certainly was). Some reveal the roots of now-standardised terms, such as ”Sweet Heart: …a Girl’s Lover, or a Man’s Mistress. Grose’s copy reads like a commonplace book for these wanderings, and contains over 1,000 manuscript additions.
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In 1789, Robert Burns met and befriended Grose, about whom he wrote a number of poems almost as rude as their subject. from The Land of Burns by Wilson & Chambers (Glasgow: Blackie & Son, 1840). Grose was certainly a committed field researcher he used, along with his assistant Tom Cocking, to take walks, often at night, through the streets, slums, docks and drinking dens of London in order to pick up the latest slang terms.įrancis Grose. Through a varied life, including a long military career, he sustained an enthusiastic philological interest, and his keen ear for linguistic curios both military and demotic meant that the first edition of his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue included some 9,000 words that had been omitted from Johnson’s Dictionary (BOOK SOLD).
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#Dictionary of slang uk update#
For those who understand that the right and proper use of a dictionary is looking up rude words, this book might just be the perfect copy of the perfect dictionary. Francis Grose’s dictionary of slang, The Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue ( UPDATE BOOK SOLD), 1785 is the founding text of obscene lexicography, and we have acquired the author’s own copy of the first edition, thoroughly annotated by him with additions (and some expurgations) in preparation for the second edition of 1788.įrancis Grose (1731-1791) was well-described by Eric Partridge, his 20th-century counterpart in the field of slang lexicography, as “the greatest antiquary, joker, and porter-drinker of his day, and one of the happiest wits of the late 18th century”.