The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue dates from 1811 and this is probably the only full, uncensored and searchable version of this dictionary on the internet. All the original crudities have been restored and it offers an interesting perspective on Common English from the time of the Regency and Jane Austen.

Select a letter or type a word and click Find. Searches are automatically wild-carded and clicking on words in the first column will look for all occurrences of that word, or related word.

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Entries releated to OWL

 

APOTHECARY		To talk like an apothecary; to use hard or gallipot words: from the assumed gravity and affectation of knowledge generally put on by the gentlemen of this profession, who are commonly as superficial in their learning as they are pedantic in their language.
BEEF		To cry beef; to give the alarm. They have cried beef on us. - To be in a man's beef; to wound him with a sword. To be in a woman's beef; to have carnal knowledge of her. Say you bought your beef of me, a jocular request from a butcher to a fat man. implying that he credits the butcher who serves him.
BUBBER		A drinking bowl; also a great drinker; a thief that steals plate from public houses.
CACKLING CHEATS		Fowls.
CAT MATCH		When a rook or cully is engaged amongst bad bowlers.
CHEEK BY JOWL		Side by side, hand to fist.
CHURCH WORK		Said of any work that advances slowly.
COCKSHUT TIME		The evening, when fowls go to roost.
COLD BURNING		A punishment inflicted by private soldiers on their comrades for trifling offences, or breach of their mess laws; it is administered in the following manner: The prisoner is set against the wall, with the arm which is to be burned tied as high above his head as possible. The executioner then ascends a stool, and having a bottle of cold water, pours it slowly down the sleeve of the delinquent, patting him, and leading the water gently down his body, till it runs out at his breeches knees: this is repeated to the other arm, if he is sentenced to be burned in both.
COLT BOWL		Laid short of the jack by a colt bowler, i.e. a person raw or unexperienced in the art of bowling.
COOPED UP		Imprisoned, confined like a fowl in a coop.
COUNTY WORK		Said of any work that advances slowly.
CROP		A nick name for a presbyterian: from their cropping their hair, which they trimmed close to a bowl-dish, placed as a guide on their heads; whence they were likewise called roundheads. See ROUNDHEADS.
DEVIL		The gizzard of a turkey or fowl, scored, peppered, salted and broiled: it derives its appellation from being hot in the mouth.
FUNK		To smoke; figuratively, to smoke or stink through fear. I was in a cursed funk. To funk the cobler; a schoolboy's trick, performed with assafoettida and cotton, which are stuffed into a pipe: the cotton being lighted, and the bowl of the pipe covered with a coarse handkerchief, the smoke is blown out at the small end, through the crannies of a cobler's stall.
GO SHOP		The Queen's Head in Duke's court, Bow street, Covent Garden; frequented by the under players: where gin and water was sold in three-halfpenny bowls, called Goes; the gin was called Arrack. The go, the fashion; as, large hats are all the go.
GRIND		To have carnal knowledge of a woman.
GYPSIES		A set of vagrants, who, to the great disgrace of our police, are suffered to wander about the country. They pretend that they derive their origin from the ancient Egyptians, who were famous for their knowledge in astronomy and other sciences; and, under the pretence of fortune-telling, find means to rob or defraud the ignorant and superstitious. To colour their impostures, they artificially discolour their faces, and speak a kind of gibberish peculiar to themselves. They rove up and down the country in large companies, to the great terror of the farmers, from whose geese, turkeys, and fowls, they take very considerable contributions.
HOLIDAY		A holiday bowler; a bad bowler. Blind man's holiday; darkness, night. A holiday is any part of a ship's bottom, left uncovered in paying it. SEA TERM. It is all holiday; See ALL HOLIDAY.
HUNT'S DOG		He is like Hunt's dog, will neither go to church nor stay at home. One Hunt, a labouring man at a small town in Shropshire, kept a mastiff, who on being shut up on Sundays, whilst his master went to church, howled so terribly as to disturb the whole village; wherefore his master resolved to take him to church with him: but when he came to the church door, the dog having perhaps formerly been whipped out by the sexton, refused to enter; whereupon Hunt exclaimed loudly against his dog's obstinacy, who would neither go to church nor stay at home. This shortly became a bye-word for discontented and whimsical persons.
IDEA POT		The knowledge box, the head. See KNOWLEDGE BOX.
IVY BUSH		Like an owl in an ivy bush; a simile for a meagre or weasel-faced man, with a large wig, or very bushy hair.
JACK		A farthing, a small bowl serving as the mark for bowlers. An instrument for pulling off boots.
JOWL		The cheek. Cheek by jowl; close together, or cheek to cheek. My eyes how the cull sucked the blowen's jowl; he kissed the wench handsomely.
KNOCK		To knock a woman; to have carnal knowledge of her. To knock off; to conclude: phrase borrowed from the blacksmith. To knock under; to submit.
KNOWLEDGE BOX		The head.
MUTTON		In her mutton, i.e. having carnal knowledge of a woman.
OCCUPY		To occupy a woman; to have carnal knowledge of her.
OWL		To catch the; a trick practised upon ignorant country boobies, who are decoyed into a barn under pretence of catching an owl, where, after divers preliminaries, the joke ends in their having a pail of water poured upon their heads.
OWL IN AN IVY BUSH		He looks like an owl in an ivy bush; frequently said of a person with a large frizzled wig, or a woman whose hair is dressed a-la-blowze.
OWLERS		Those who smuggle wool over to France.
PECCAVI		To cry peccavi; to acknowledge one's self in an error, to own a fault: from the Latin PECCAVI, I have sinned.
PILLALOO		The Irish cry or howl at funerals.
POLL		The head, jolly nob, napper, or knowledge box; also a wig.
ROUNDHEADS		A term of reproach to the puritans and partizans of Oliver Cromwell, and the Rump Parliament, who it is said made use of a bowl as a guide to trim their hair.
ROWLAND		To give a Rowland for an Oliver; to give an equivalent. Rowland and Oliver were two knights famous in romance: the wonderful achievements of the one could only be equalled by those of the other.
SCAPEGALLOWS		One who deserves and has narrowly escaped the gallows, a slip-gibbet, one for whom the gallows is said to groan.
SCAVEY		Sense, knowledge. "Massa, me no scavey;" master, I don't know (NEGRO LANGUAGE) perhaps from the French SCAVOIR.
SNAP DRAGON		A Christmas gambol: raisins and almonds being put into a bowl of brandy, and the candles extinguished, the spirit is set on fire, and the company scramble for the raisins.
SNEAKER		A small bowl.
STRUM		To have carnal knowledge of a woman; also to play badly on the harpsichord; or any other stringed instrument. A strummer of wire, a player on any instrument strung with wire.
TIFFING		Eating or drinking out of meal time, disputing or falling out; also lying with a wench, A tiff of punch, a small bowl of punch.
TO TIP		To give or lend. Tip me your daddle; give me your hand. Tip me a hog; give me a shilling. To tip the lion; to flatten a man's nose with the thumb, and, at the same time to extend his mouth, with the fingers, thereby giving him a sort of lion-like countenauce. To tip the velvet; tonguing woman. To tip all nine; to knock down all the nine pins at once, at the game of bows or skittles: tipping, at these gaines, is slightly touching the tops of the pins with the bowl. Tip; a draught; don't spoil his tip.
TOUCH		To touch; to get money from any one; also to arrest. Touched in the wind; broken winded. Touched in the head; insane, crazy. To touch up a woman; to have carnal knowledge of her. Touch bone and whistle; any one having broken wind backwards, according to the vulgar law, may be pinched by any of the company till he has touched bone (i.e. his teeth) and whistled.
TRIG		The point at which schoolboys stand to shoot their marbles at taw; also the spot whence bowlers deliver the bowl.
TUP		To have carnal knowledge of a woman.
VOWEL		A gamester who does not immediately pay his losings, is said to vowel the winner, by repeating the vowels I. O. U. or perhaps from giving his note for the money according to the Irish form, where the acknowledgment of the debt is expressed by the letters I. O. U. which, the sum and name of the debtor being added, is deemed a sufficient security among gentlemen.
WALKING POULTERER		One who steals fowls, and hawks them from door to door.
WHISKIN		A shallow brown drinking bowl.
WITCHES		Silver. Witcher bubber; a silver bowl. Witcher tilter; a silver-hilted sword. Witcher cully; a silversmith.
WORD OF MOUTH		To drink by word of mouth, i.e. out of the bowl or bottle instead, of a glass.
WORM		To worm out; to obtain the knowledge of a secret by craft, also to undermine or supplant. He is gone to the diet of worms; he is dead and buried, or gone to Rothisbone.
WRINKLE		A wrinkle-bellied whore; one who has had a number of bastards: child-bearing leaves wrinkles in a woman's belly. To take the wrinkles out of any one's belly; to fill it out by a hearty meal. You have one wrinkle more in your arse; i.e. you have one piece of knowledge more than you had, every fresh piece of knowledge being supposed by the vulgar naturalists to add a wrinkle to that part.
YOWL		To cry aloud, or howl.