Victorian jargon watch: "a dictionary of heterodox English, slang and phrase"

The Internet Archive has a complete scan of James Redding Ware's wonderful 1909 treatise "Passing English of the Victorian era: a dictionary of heterodox English, slang and phrase," ganked from the University of Toronto's Robarts library. The Archive has OCR'ed versions, hi-rez PDFs of color and b/w scans, and every ebook format you're likely to need.

If you'd prefer a hardcopy there's a paperback reprint for sale, too. It's really something. Here's a few gems:

Enobs (Back slang). Bone, in ordinary plural. A very favourite inversion is a sort of rebus, bones showing affording a study of ' knobs '.

But he swallowed a box of matches one day which burnt away all the fat and left the mere enoba you see now.

Evening wheezes (Peoples'). False news, spread in evening half- penny papers in order to sell them.

Fairy (Lower Peoples). A debauched, hideous old woman, especially when drunk.

Fake a poke (Thieves'). To pick, or manipulate, a pocket. This phrase is a singular revival. Johnson has ' Fake amongst seamen a pile of rope,' and as to poke ' a pocket or small bag'. ' I will not buy a pig in a poke !' Camden.

He denied that when entering the music hall he was accused by a larty of picking her pocket, and further said that when called out he did not say he had never ' faked a poke ' in his life. People, 6th September 1896.

Fake pie (Straitened Soc., 1880). A towards -the-end-of-the- week effort at pastry, into which go all the ' orts ', ' overs ', and ' ends ' of the week. See Resurrection pie a term which this has superseded.

Penny puzzle (Street, 1883). Sausage because it is never found out. (See Bag o' mystery.)

Wingers sometimes called Flanges (Colloquial about 1865). After the Crimean beard, which meant all the hair growable on the face, had lasted in fashion about ten or twelve years, the chin came to be once more shown, and the whiskers were thrown back, or pulled away from the cheeks, and allowed to grow as long as nature decided. The name was obtained from their streaming and waving character.

Passing English of the Victorian era : a dictionary of heterodox English, slang and phrase. [archive.org]

Passing English of the Victorian era : a dictionary of heterodox English, slang and phrase. [Amazon]

(via Making Light)

• [oasisob1]

  I expect some of this slang to come back into fashion here on BB. I’d use some myself, but I was born a bit tired.

• [noah django]

  >Fairy (Lower Peoples). A debauched, hideous old woman, especially when drunk.

  there is a woman who fits this description in my apartment building.  Her first name?  “Fairy.”  I’m crappin’ you negative.

• [Lupus_Yonderboy]

  I personally love Francis Grose’s “Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue”, late 18th Century/early 19th (originally published in 1785, multiple editions through 1811).  I bought a copy in the Strand years ago and it makes an awesome bathroom book/very light bedtime reading.

  http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Classical_Dictionary_of_the_Vulgar_Ton.html?id=NqHteIy-lXYC

  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5402

  http://www.amazon.com/1811-Dictionary-Vulgar-Tongue-dictionary/dp/069580216X

  • [kiptw]

     Three comments, and one of them is the one I clicked in to make. Seconded!