Such Language! Part 22

Oh, the Rabelaisian buffet that is the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue! What’s your favorite word or phrase this time? Muckworm is soooo very evocative, as is old toast--can't you just picture a spry, dapper old gentleman? What do you think?

Arch Duke: A comical or eccentric fellow. (I see no reason why my younger brother should be called an arch duke just because he prefers gravy to whipped cream on his strawberries.)

Caudge-pawed: Left-handed (Being caudge-pawed made remembering which hand to use when being presented to the queen something of a nightmare for Lucinda.)

Gabey:  A foolish fellow. (Sir Arnold is enough of a gabey to think that his purple and gold waistcoat is the height of fashion.)

Slamkin:  A female sloven, one whose clothes seem hung on with a pitchfork. (To see her now fluttering her fan and swishing her skirts, you’d never suspect my sister Ermentrude was an utter slamkin before her come-out.)

Peccavi: To cry peccavi; to acknowledge one’s self in an error, to own a fault: from the Latin peccavi, I have sinned. (Ermentrude won’t cry peccavi, but I know she’s the one who borrowed my new parasol and left it at Gunter’s.)

Muckworm: A miser (That old muckworm Mr. Pauncefort must be rolling in his grave to see how open-handed and generous his young nephew and heir has been toward his tenants.)

Old Toast:  A brisk old fellow. (Great-Uncle Gilbert walks three times up and down Rotten Row each day, just to hear the ladies whisper about what a lively old toast he is.)