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Language being an ever-evolving thing, colonial insults of 1700 might have quite different meanings in 2020. So a prig of yesteryear is not a prig of today. These 10 colonial insults are peculiar to their time. People threw them about as slang terms for various types of unsavory people.
- Addle-Plot
- Ambidexter
- Balsam
- Banbury Story
- Brother of The Quill
- Chameleon Diet
- Chirping-Merry
- Dirty-Beau
- A Good Voice to Beg Bacon
- Mulligrubs
B.E. defined this as a “Martin Mar-All,” and in doing so, name-checked the title character of a 1667 comedy by John Dryden that would have been popular at the time. But in modern terms, an addle-plotis someone who spoils or ruins the progress of any undertaking—a spoilsport.
If you’re ambidextrous, you’re able to use both hands equally well. But if you’re an ambidexter, you’re “one that goes snacks [divide profits] in gaming with both parties”—or, put another way, an untrustworthy double-dealer.
Ready money or cash. One explanation is that dispensing chemists always held a lot of cash, but according to slang lexicographer Eric Partridge, it’s more likely this alluded to the “healing properties” of being wealthy.
A ridiculous story, or a tale that rambles on without going anywhere, is a Banbury story or Banbury tale. According to etymological folklore, this was the original “cock and bull” story (it’s also called the Banbury story of a cock and bull)—so called because of two pubs with those names close to the village of Banbury in Oxfordshire, England—but j...
A professional writer. A brother of the blade was a swordsman or soldier, and a brother of the stringwas a musician.
Because chameleons move so slowly, they were once believed to get all the nutriment they need from the air—and as a result, a chameleon dietwas a missed meal or a particularly meager diet.
Feeling in a good mood because you’re having a drink with friends? You’re chirping-merry—or, as B.E. put it, “very pleasant over a glass of good liquor.”
“A slovenly fellow, yet pretending to beauishness.” Or, in other words, a man acting or dressing more prim and proper than he really is.
Telling someone they’ve “a good voice to beg bacon” is effectively the 17th-century version of “don’t quit your day job.”
Being down in the dumps has been known as being in the mulligrubssince the late 1500s, but according to B.E., by the late 1600s it was being used to mean “a counterfeit fit of the sullens”—or in other words, a faked or exaggerated bad mood.
When you think of Colonial America, soldiers marching to fife and drum and Benjamin Franklin flying a kite are probably what come to mind—but some awesome slang came out of the period, too.
Oct 22, 2013 · The following are slang, euphemisms, and terms for the letter B and are primarily taken from Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue published in 1811.
A slang is a vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in everyday conversation but avoided in formal writing. [1][2] It also often refers to the language exclusively used by the members of particular in-groups in order to establish group identity, exclude outsiders, or both.
Not all vulgar speech is considered “swear words,” referencing sex acts and bodily functions, but many a critic and lexicographer has nonetheless decided that slang, obscene or otherwise, doesn’t belong in polite company with formal diction.
Sep 12, 2004 · Back in 18th Century Britain, the man in the street would know you were referring to a twit with a big bum who fancies Jordan. The Vulgar Tongue - a dictionary of slang originally published in...
