dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Scores of others have definitions so obscure that you wonder why a word was needed at all. Was it necessary to have quite so many different words to describe the less fortunate members of society?

Here they are:

• ascii: those people who, at certain times of year, have no shadow on them at noon; such are the inhabitants of the torrid zone, because they have the sun twice a year vertical to them

• badger: one that buys corn and victuals in one place and sell them in other places

• beard: to take or pluck by the beard, in contempt or anger

• brainsick: diseased in the understanding, addleheaded,giddy,thoughtless

(cf: present definition: mad)

• buzzer: a secrete whisperer

• cabbage: to steal cloth in cutting clothes

• canter: a term of reproach for hypocrites, who talk formally of religion, without obeying it

• car: a small carriage of burden, usually drawn by one horse or two

• clicker: a low word for the servant of a salesman, who stands at the door to invite customers

• cankerbit: bitten with an envenomed tooth

• dangler: a man that hangs about women only to waste time

• dish-washer: the name of a bird

• doodle: a trifler, an idler

• gingerness: niceness, tenderness

• gloat: to cast side glances as a timorous lover

(*TDF:to feel or express great, often malicious pleasure or self-satisfaction)

• gossip: 1. one who answers for the child in baptism 2. a tippling companion

(*TFD: a woman friend)

• gray: a badger

• grice: a little pig

• force: to mince (eg: forced beef: minced beef)

• fren: a worthless woman (* TDF: presently used to mean "a stranger" )

• frump: to mock; to browbeat

(* TDF: a woman regarded as dull, plain, dowdy, drab, unattractive)

• futile: talkative

• gaffer: a word of respect now obsolete, or applied only in contempt to a mean person

• gallant: a whoremaster who caresses women to debouch them

• jogger: one who moves very dully and heavily

• huggermugger: a hug in the dark

(*TDF: to act stealthily)

• ingathering: an act of geeing in the harvest

(*TDF: request for a sum of money)

• intonation: the act of thundering

• kennel: to lie: to dwell; (TDF: a doghouse)

• kicksy-wicksey: a made word in ridicule and disdain of a wife

(*TDF: that which is restless and uneasy)

• lambs-wool: ale mixed with pulp of roasted apples

• leech: a physician

• lickerishness: a niceness of palate

(*TDF: lecherous, greedy)

• lig : to lie

(*TDF: a function at which free entertainment and refreshments are available)

• liking: plump

• mad: an earth worm

• manure: to cultivate by manual labour

(* TDF: to fertilize by applying materials such as dung)

(*TDF: preference, taste, fondness)

• mumps: sullenness;silent anger

(*TDF: ann infectious disease)

• naff: a kind of tufted sea-bird

(*TDF: outmoded, in poor taste, to fool around)

neat: black cattle, oxen

• nepotism: fondness of nephews

(*TDF: favouritism shown or parontage granted to relatives, as in business)

• pash: a kiss (TDF: romantic infatuation)

• peeper: a young chickens just breaking the shell

• pencil: a small brush of hair which painters dip in their colours, to paint

• pickle: an small parcel of land enclosed with a hedge, which in some countries is called a pringle

• piddle: to pick at table; to feed squeamishly and without appetite

(*TDF: to waste time)

• pink: to wink with the eyes

• poster: a courier; one that travels hastily

• pother: to make a blustering ineffectual effort

(*TDF: an excited state of agitation, to make upset)

• pressgang: a crew that strolls about the streets to force men into naval service

(*historial vocabulary)

• punk: a whore; a common prostitue; a strumpet

• rum: a country parson

(*TDF: alcoholic drink, odd)

• sarcophagus: flesh-eating;feeding on flesh

(*TDF: a stone coffin)

• skipjack: an upstart

(*TDF:a kind of fish, a kind of yacht..etc.)

• smellfeast: a parasite; a hunter of good table

• spanker: a small coin

• spindleshanked: having small legs

(*TDF: having long, slender legs)

• sprit: to throw out; to eject with force

(*TDF: n. Nautical

A pole that extends diagonally across a fore-and-aft sail from the lower part of the mast to the peak of the sail.
A bowsprit.)

Anonymous ID: c785ac June 10, 2025, 11:35 a.m. No.23154557 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>4606

sweepstake: a man that wins all

(*TDF: a. a lottery in which the stakes of the participants constitute the prize

b. the prize itself )

• tavern: a wine selling public house

• tarantula: an insect whose bite is only cured by music

• teen: sorrow; grief

• toilet: a dressing table

• toot: to pry; to peep

(TDF: to blow sound, to snort cocaine)

• trot: an old woman. In contempt

• stew: a brothel; a house of prostitution

• urinal: a bottle in which water is kept for inspection

• urinator: a diver; one who searched under water

• vaticide: a murderer of poets

(*TDF: the murderer of a prophet)

• wife: a woman of low employment•

• wimble: active;nimble;shifting to and fro

(*TDF: gimlet; to bore a hole with or as if with a wimble)

• yond: mad, furious

(*TDF: yonder)

• aftertossing: a motion of the sea after a storm

• answer-jobber: He that makes a trade of writing answers

• artuate: to tear limb from limb

• australise: to tend towards the south

• bedpresser: a heavy lazy fellow

• boghouse: a house of office

• bootcatcher: the person whose business at an inn is to pull off the boots of passengers

• by-coffeehouse: a coffeehouse in an obscure place

• cart-jade: a vile horse, fit only for the cart

• cuckingstool: an engine invented for the punishment of scolds and unquiet women

• dewbesprent: sprinkled with dew

• discase: to strip

• downgyred: let down in circular wrinkles

• eyeservant: a servant that works only while watched

• fancymonger: one who deals in tricks of imagination

(*present definition: a whimsical lover)

• faxed: hairy

• felo-de-se: he that committeth felony by murdering himself

• ferula: an instrument of correction with which young scholars are beaten on the hand; so named because anciently the stalks of fennel(ferula) were used for this purpose

• frorne: frozen

• fulham: false dice

• garlickeater: a mean fellow

• habnap: at random; at the mercy of chance; without any rule or certainty of effect

• hastings: peas that come early

• heart-breaker: a woman's curls, supposed to break the heart of all her lovers

• kneed: having knees

• kubble: to beat

• landjobber: one who buys and sells land for other men (an estate agent)

• mobby: an American drink made of potatoes

• mobile: the populace, the rout, the mob

• mope-eyed: blind of one eye

(*TDF: shortshighted)

• nightdog: a dog that hunts in the night. Used by deer stealers

• nonjuring: one who conceiving James II unjustly deposed, refused to wear allegiance to those who have succeeded him

• pailmail: voilent;boisterous

• pallmalll: a ply in which the ball is struck with a mallet through an iron ring

• parnel: a punk; a slut

• party-jury: a jury in some trials half foreigners and half natives

• pict: a painted person

• pigsney: a word of endearment to a girl

• saveall: a small pan inserted into a candlestick to save the ends of candles

• willi: many

• agrammatist: an illiterate man

• aboriginies: earliest inhabitants of a country; as the Welsh in Britain

• bilbo: a sword, a rapier

bishop: a mixture of wine, orange and sugar

• belweather: a sheep that leads the flock with a bell on his nece

• bravo: a murderer for hire

• bubby: a woman's breast

• budget: a small bag

• camelopard: an abyssinian animal, taller than an elephant, but not so thick He is so named because he has a neck like a camel, he is spotted like a pard, but his spots are white upon a red ground, The Italians call him a giraffe.

• covert: the state of a woman sheltered by marriage under her husband

• crack-rope: a fellow that deserves hanging

• countermark: a horse is said to be countermarked when his corner-teeth are artificially made hollow, a false mark being made in the hollow place, an imitation of the eye of a bean, to conceal the horse's age

• decimation: a selection by lots of every tenth soldier, in a general mutiny, for punishment

• decollation: the act of beheading

• discase: to strip

• dogsleep: pretended sleep

• eame: an uncle

• findy: plump

• flipp: a liquor much used in ships, made by mixing beer with spirits and sugar

• gad: to ramble about without any settled purpose: to rove loosely and idly

• gallow: to terrify, to fright (*gallows: gibbet)

• ganch: to drop from a high place upon hooks by way of punishment, a practice in Turkey.

• gelid: very cold

• geason: wonderful

• gazehound: a hound that pursues not by the scent but by the eye

• german: related

• grubstreet: originally the name of a street in Moorfields in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries and poems

• hector: a bully

• hoiden: 1. an ill-taught awkward country girl 2. to romp indecently

• intercommon: to feed at the same table

• jack-pudding: a merry-andrew

• lapidate: to kill by stoning§

• lasslorn: forsaken by his mistress

• laystall: an heap of dung

• liplabour: action of the lips without concurrence of the mind, words without sentiment

• merry thought: a forked bone on the body of fowls; so called because boys and girls pull in play at the two sides, the longest part broken off betokening priority of marriage

• mitcher: a lazy loiterer, who skulks about in corners and by-places, and keeps out of sight; a hedge creeper

• mispoint: to confuse sentences by wrong punctuation

• mohock: the name of a cruel nation of America given to ruffians who infested, or rather were imagined to infest, the streets of London

(*TDF: one of a group of aristocratic ruffians who attacked people at night on the streets of London in the early 18C)

• muchwhat: nearly

• morbose: preceeding from disease; not healthy

• natation: the act of swimming

• nepenthe: a drug that drives away all pains

(* mentioned in Odyssey as a remedy for grief, * cf: panacea)

• noctambulo: a sleepwalker

• nooning: repose at noon

• nowes: the marriage knot, not in use

• owler: one who carries contraband goods illicitly by night

• parbreak: to vomit

• pirate: any robber; particularly a bookselller who seized the copies of other men

(*very personal)

• quack: a boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand

(eg. quack doctor)

• rack-rent: a rent raised to the uttermost

• ribroast: to beat soundly

• sciomachy: a battle with a shadow

• scranch: to grind between the teeth. The Scots retain it.

(*very personal)

• second sight: the power of seeing things future, or things distant; supposed inherent in some of the Scottish islanders

• shrewmouse: a mouse of which the bite is generally supposed venomous, and to which vulgar tradition assigns such malignity, that she is said to lame the foot over which she runs, I am informed that all these reports are calumnious, and that her feet and teeth are equally harmless with those of any other little mouse OUr ancestors however looked on her name with such terror that they are supposed to have give her name to a scolding woman, whom for her venom they call a shrew

• simony: the crime of buying or selling church preferment

• steven: a cry, or loud clamour; voice, speech, language

• stingo: old beer

• succumb: to yield; to sink under any difficulty. Not in use, except among the Scotch.

• truepenny: a familiar phrase for an honest fellow

• witworm: one that feeds on wit or destroys wits