Such Language! Part 26

More wordly wonderment and wackiness, with some help from the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. What's your favorite word this week?

Cream-pot love: Such as young fellows pretend to dairy-maids, to get cream and other good things from them. (My brother Augustus brings a posy every week to our cook and swears eternal devotion, but we all know it’s simply cream-pit love.)

Plump currant: I am not plump currant; I am out of sorts. (Overindulgence in Cook’s strawberry rhubarb curd tarts might explain why he is not in plump currant this evening.)

Inexpressibles: Breeches. (Augustus swore he hadn’t had a single tart, but suspicious red stains on his inexpressibles told a different tale.)

Fire shovel: He or she when young, was fed with a fire shovel; a saying of persons with wide mouths. (Augustus’s long devotion to Cook might explain why he appears to have been fed with a fire shovel, but Papa’s mouth is similarly wide.)

Gallied: Hurried, vexed, over-fatigued, perhaps like a galley slave. (Poor Cook tends to look more than a little gallied when Augustus is home from school during holidays.)

May bees: May bees don’t fly all the year long; an answer to anyone who prefaces a proposition with, It may be. (Augustus hopes that maybe the strawberries will have a longer season this year; in response, Cook was heard to mutter something about May bees.)

Hum durgeon: An imaginary illness. (Grandmama’s latest hum durgeon involves an infirmity in her spleen; her liver is undoubtedly relieved to have the week off.)

Such Language! Part 26

More lexigraphic levity and laughter, courtesy of the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Enjoy!

Mulligrubs: Low-spirited, having an imaginary sickness. My sister has a  thorough case of the mulligrubs since she found out that she wasn’t invited to the Duchess of Glubley’s ball.

Sing small: To be humbled, confounded, or abashed: to have little or nothing to say for one’s self. She’s having to sing small now after she told all her friends that the duchess’s son had asked her to open the ball with him.

Low tide: When there is no money in a man’s pocket. I had planned to buy you a splendid birthday gift, but alas! It is low tide with me this month.

Peery: Inquisitive, suspicious. Rich young Miss Colquhon’s guardian is so excessively peery that no one may dance more than once with her at any ball in a given week.

The Go: The dash. The mode. He is quite the go, he is quite varment, he is prime, he is bang up, are synonymous expressions. Young Mr. Mortimer thinks himself quite the go, but I fear none of his more fashionable friends share his opinion.

Ribroast: To beat. My grandmother gave Papa such a ribroasting at chess once that he still winces at the sight of black-and-white tiled floors.

Altitudes: The man is in his altitudes, i.e. he is drunk. Uncle Seymour may have retired from mountain-climbing years ago, but he regularly achieves his altitudes at his club of an evening with the help of the brandy decanter.