Sluice your Twitter gob with 19th Century vulgarities
Salty language is the stuff of drinking and lovemaking, and who doesn’t need to keep those things fresh? Moreover, when you can swear effectively, usually measured in laughs and other spontaneous oral utterances, in a language other than English, you earn double attaboys. If you’re the type who finds French, German, Italian, Chinese, Russian, etc. impossible to speak or convincingly fake, 1800′s English slang might be just the thing.
Are you common cunning linguist with an unquenchable penchant for pestilent profundities? Then you really need to spend some time with Captain Grose’s 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, a compendium of early 19th Century English, as in Britain, slang.
SLOPS — Wearing apparel and bedding used by seamen
SLOP SELLER — A dealer in those articles, who keeps a slop shop
SLOUCH — A stooping gait, a negligent slovenly fellow. To slouch; to hang down one’s head. A slouched hat: a hat whose brims are let down
SLUBBER DE GULLION — A dirty nasty fellow
SLUG — A piece of lead of any shape, to be fired from a blunderbuss. To fire a slug; to drink a dram
SLUG-A-BED — A drone, one that cannot rise in the morning
SLUICE YOUR GOB — Take a hearty drink
SLUR — To slur, is a method of cheating at dice: also to cast a reflection on any one’s character, to scandalize
SLUSH — Greasy dish-water, or skimmings of a pot where fat meat has been boiled
SLUSH BUCKET — A foul feeder, one that eats much greasy food
SLY BOOTS — A cunning fellow, under the mask of simplicity
SMABBLED, or SNABBLED — Killed in battle
And, yes, you can also get Captain Grose’s 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue Tweeted to you a word a day — @vulgar_tongue.
So, Mister Sly Boots, don’t be ye an arbor vitae, follow the good captain’s Tweets now…
What’s your take?
via The Atlantic
