Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
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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.

Example:You click A and one of the results is ARSE. If you now click on ARSE the full list of related content will be displayed.

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Entries releated to RAP

 

ALE DRAPER  An alehouse keeper.
 
BEAU TRAP  A loose stone in a pavement, under which water lodges, and on being trod upon, squirts it up, to the great damage of white stockings; also a sharper neatly dressed, lying in wait for raw country squires, or ignorant fops.
 
BIT  Money. He grappled the cull's bit; he seized the man's money. A bit is also the smallest coin in Jamaica, equal to about sixpence sterling.
 
BLACK STRAP  Bene Carlo wine; also port. A task of labour imposed on soldiers at Gibraltar, as a punishment for small offences.
 
BREAD  Employment. Out of bread; out of employment. In bad bread; in a disagreeable scrape, or situation.
 
BULLY TRAP  A brave man with a mild or effeminate appearance, by whom bullies are frequently taken in.
 
BUM TRAP  A sheriff's officer who arrests debtors. Ware hawke! the bum traps are fly to our panney; keep a good look out, the bailiffs know where our house is situated.
 
CADDEE  A helper. An under-strapper.
 
CAG MAGG  Bits and scraps of provisions. Bad meat.
 
CAT STICKS  Thin legs, compared to sticks with which boys play at cat. See TRAPSTICKS.
 
CHERUBIMS  Peevish children, because cherubims and seraphims continually do cry.
 
CHOAKING PYE, or COLD PYE  A punishment inflicted on any person sleeping in company: it consists in wrapping up cotton in a case or tube of paper, setting it on fire, and directing the smoke up the nostrils of the sleeper. See HOWELL'S COTGRAVE.
 
COOL CRAPE  A shroud.
 
CRIMP  A broker or factor, as a coal crimp, who disposes of the cargoes of the Newcastle coal ships; also persons employed to trapan or kidnap recruits for the East Indian and African companies. To crimp, or play crimp; to play foul or booty: also a cruel manner of cutting up fish alive, practised by the London fishmongers, in order to make it eat firm; cod, and other crimped fish, being a favourite dish among voluptuaries and epicures.
 
CROSS BITE  One who combines with a sharper to draw in a friend; also, to counteract or disappoint. - This is peculiarly used to signify entrapping a man so as to obtain CRIM. COM. money, in which the wife, real or supposed, conspires with the husband.
 
DRAPER  An ale draper; an alehouse keeper.
 
FLASH  To shew ostentatiously. To flash one's ivory; to laugh and shew one's teeth. Don't flash your ivory, but shut your potatoe trap, and keep your guts warm; the Devil loves hot tripes.
 
FLYING PASTY  Shit wrapped in paper and thrown over a neighbour's wall.
 
GALIMAUFREY  A hodgepodge made up of the remnants and scraps of the larder.
 
GALLOPER  A blood horse. A hunter. The toby gill clapped his bleeders to his galloper and tipped the straps the double. The highwayman spurred his horse and got away from the officers.
 
GOLD DROPPERS  Sharpers who drop a piece of gold, which they pick up in the presence of some unexperienced person, for whom the trap is laid, this they pretend to have found, and, as he saw them pick it up, they invite him to a public house to partake of it: when there, two or three of their comrades drop in, as if by accident, and propose cards, or some other game, when they seldom fail of stripping their prey.
 
GRAPPLE THE RAILS  A cant name used in Ireland for whiskey.
 
GRAPPLING IRONS  Handcuffs.
 
GUDGEON  One easily imposed on. To gudgeon; to swallow the bait, or fall into a trap: from the fish of that name, which is easily taken.
 
GUT SCRAPER, or TORMENTOR of CATGUT  A fiddler.
 
HANG OUT  The traps scavey where we hang out; the officers know where we live.
 
HELL FIRE DICK  The Cambridge driver of the Telegraph. The favorite companion of the University fashionables, and the only tutor to whose precepts they attend.
 
HUMMER  A great lye, a rapper. See RAPPER.
 
KICKERAPOO  Dead. NEGRO WORD.
 
LEATHER  To lose leather; to be galled with riding on horseback, or, as the Scotch express it, to be saddle sick. To leather also meant to beat, perhaps originally with a strap: I'll leather you to your heart's content. Leather-headed; stupid. Leathern conveniency; term used by quakers for a stage-coach.
 
LIKENESS  A phrase used by thieves when the officers or turnkeys are examining their countenance. As the traps are taking our likeness; the officers are attentively observing us.
 
LOB'S POUND  A prison. Dr. Grey, in his notes on Hudibras, explains it to allude to one Doctor Lob, a dissenting preacher, who used to hold forth when conventicles were prohibited, and had made himself a retreat by means of a trap door at the bottom of his pulpit. Once being pursued by the officers of justice, they followed him through divers subterraneous passages, till they got into a dark cell, from whence they could not find their way out, but calling to some of their companions, swore they had got into Lob's Pound.
 
LOUSE TRAP  A small toothed comb.
 
LURCH  To be left in the lurch; to be abandoned by one's confederates or party, to be left in a scrape.
 
MAN TRAP  A woman's commodity.
 
MOUSETRAP  The parson's mousetrap; the state of matrimony.
 
PACKTHREAD  To talk packthread; to use indecent language well wrapt up.
 
PERSUADERS  Spurs. The kiddey clapped his persuaders to his prad but the traps boned him; the highwayman spurred his horse hard, but the officers seized him.
 
PONTIUS PILATE  A pawnbroker. Pontius Pilate's guards, the first regiment of foot, or Royal Scots: so intitled from their supposed great antiquity. Pontius Pilate's counsellor; one who like him can say, Non invenio causam, I can find no cause. Also (Cambridge) a Mr. Shepherd of Trinity College; who disputing with a brother parson on the comparative rapidity with which they read the liturgy, offered to give him as far as Pontius Pilate in the Belief.
 
POTATOE TRAP  The mouth. Shut your potatoe trap and give your tongue a holiday; i.e. be silent. IRISH WIT.
 
RAP  To take a false oath; also to curse. He rapped out a volley; i.e. he swore a whole volley of oaths. To rap, means also to exchange or barter: a rap is likewise an Irish halfpenny. Rap on the knuckles; a reprimand.
 
RAPPAREES  Irish robbers, or outlaws, who in the time of Oliver Cromwell were armed with short weapons, called in Irish RAPIERS, used for ripping persons up.
 
RAPPER  A swinging great lie.
 
RATTLE-TRAPS  A contemptuous name for any curious portable piece of machinery, or philosophical apparatus.
 
RED RAG  The tongue. Shut your potatoe trap, and give your red rag a holiday; i.e. shut your mouth, and let your tongue rest. Too much of the red rag (too much tongue).
 
ROULEAU  A number of guineas, from twenty to fifty or more, wrapped up in paper, for the more ready circulation at gaming-tables: sometimes they are inclosed in ivory boxes, made to hold exactly 20, 50, or 100 guineas.
 
RUM BOOZE  Wine, or any other good liquor. Rum boozing welts; bunches of grapes.
 
SCRAP  A villainous scheme or plan. He whiddles the whole scrap; he discovers the whole plan or scheme.
 
SCRAPE  To get into a scrape; to be involved in a disagreeable business.
 
SCRAPER  A fiddler; also one who scrapes plates for mezzotinto prints.
 
SCRAPING  A mode of expressing dislike to a person, or sermon, practised at Oxford by the students, in scraping their feet against the ground during the preachment; frequently done to testify their disapprobation of a proctor who has been, as they think, too rigorous.
 
SCRIP  A scrap or slip of paper. The cully freely blotted the scrip, and tipt me forty hogs; the man freely signed the bond, and gave me forty shillings. - Scrip is also a Change Alley phrase for the last loan or subscription. What does scrip go at for the next rescounters? what does scrip sell for delivered at the next day of settling?
 
SLAMKIN  A female sloven, one whose clothes seem hung on with a pitch-fork, a careless trapes.
 
SMART  Spruce, fine: as smart as a carrot new scraped.
 
STRAP  To work. The kiddy would not strap, so he went on the scamp: the lad would not work, and therefore robbed on the highway.
 
STRAPPER  A large man or woman.
 
STRAPPING  Lying with a woman.
 
TAYLOR  Nine taylors make a man; an ancient and common saying, originating from the effeminacy of their employment; or, as some have it, from nine taylors having been robbed by one man; according to others, from the speech of a woollendraper, meaning that the custom of nine, taylors would make or enrich one man - A London taylor, rated to furnish half a man to the Trained Bands, asking how that could possibly be done? was answered, By sending four, journeymen and and apprentice. - Put a taylor, a weaver, and a miller into a sack, shake them well, And the first that puts out his head is certainly a thief. - A taylor is frequently styled pricklouse, assaults on those vermin with their needles.
 
TODDLE  To walk away. The cove was touting, but stagging the traps he toddled; be was looking out, and feeing the officers he walked away.
 
TORY  An advocate for absolute monarchy and church power; also an Irish vagabond, robber, Or rapparee.
 
TRANSMOGRAPHY, or TRANSMIGRIFY  To patch up vamp, or alter.
 
TRAP  To understand trap; to know one's own interest.
 
TRAP STICKS  Thin legs, gambs: from the sticks with which boys play at trap-ball.
 
TRAPAN  To inveigle, or ensnare.
 
TRAPES  A slatternly woman, a careless sluttish woman.
 
TRAPS  Constables and thief-takers.
 
TWO-HANDED  Great. A two-handed fellow or wench; a great strapping man orwoman,
 
UNDERSTRAPPER  An inferior in any office, or department.
 
WHIDDLE  To tell or discover. He whiddles; he peaches. He whiddles the whole scrap; he discovers all he knows. The cull whiddled because they would not tip him a snack: the fellow peached because they would not give him a share, They whiddle beef, and we must brush; they cry out thieves, and we must make off.
 
WRAP RASCAL  A red cloak, called also a roquelaire.
 
WRAPT UP IN WARM FLANNEL  Drunk with spirituous liquors. He was wrapt up in the tail of his mother's smock; saying of any one remarkable for his success with the ladies. To be wrapt up in any one: to have a good opinion of him, or to be under his influence.