RED RAG: the tongue, that restless red flag in a chatterer's mouth, forever wagging with gossip, scolding, and idle talk.
Recorded 1869.
Victorian slang for a tongue that simply would not stop.
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SLUM: nonsense or humbug, the glib patter and empty talk of a trickster spinning a yarn to fool the gullible.
Recorded 1820.
Long before it meant a squalid street, slum meant pure blarney.
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BEZONIAN: a needy beggar or ragged rascal, at first a raw recruit arriving penniless and ill clad, later any worthless knave.
Recorded 1591.
Shakespeare's Pistol sneers it at a foe in Henry IV, Part 2.
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WHIPJACK: a vagabond beggar who passes himself off as a shipwrecked sailor, spinning tales of lost ships to coax coins from soft hearted strangers.
Date uncertain.
Tudor rogue books warned honest folk to beware the counterfeit mariner.
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PRIGGER: a thief, a light fingered rogue who lifts purses, linen, or horses and slips away before the owner looks round.
Date uncertain.
In old thieves' cant a prigger of prancers was a horse thief.
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GROOP: a trench or drain, especially the hollow channel behind the stalls of cows or horses that carries away their dung and water.
Recorded 1816.
Every old byre had one, and every farmhand knew it well.
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JACKEY: gin, the cheap clear spirit poured in Georgian taverns and gin shops to warm the poor and ruin the reckless.
A glass of jackey, anyone?
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PROG: to scrounge for food, goods, or money by low arts, such as begging, trickery, or the abuse of a little power.
Some people prog their way through life.
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DRIVEL: a fool or idiot, the sort of slack jawed simpleton whose talk runs on like slobber from a baby's chin.
Every meeting has its resident drivel.
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SCANMAG: slander and gossip, the idle scandalous talk that spreads about someone's good name over tea and cards.
The group chat is pure scanmag.
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MUMPER: a beggar, especially a genteel one who goes from door to door pleading for charity with a mournful face.
Spare a coin for a poor mumper?
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HUMMER: a liar, especially a bold and fluent one who tells whoppers with a perfectly straight face.
We all know at least one hummer.
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ALECIED: drunk and befuddled, acting under the merry influence of too much ale or beer.
A perfect word for Friday night.
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SMOKE: to ridicule someone to their face, to mock and quiz them openly until they wish they had stayed at home.
Being smoked was never about tobacco.
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BEMUSE: to make someone drunk, to fuddle and befog their wits with strong drink until the room starts to wobble.
Two pints in and thoroughly bemused.
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FRUMP: to mock and insult someone openly, to flout, snub and sneer at them with a cutting jest.
The seventeenth century way to roast someone.
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DIDAPPER: a worthless scoundrel and shifty rogue, named for the little diving bird that keeps ducking out of sight.
Never around when the bill arrives.
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DODIPOLE: a dull witted fool or doddering old dotard, a blockhead whose wits have gone soft with the years.
Every family has one at Christmas dinner.
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DRUMBLE: to be sluggish and lazy, to dawdle and dither about a task as if half asleep, moving at a snail's pace.
Monday morning, in one word.
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