Coleman, who is a professor at the University of Leicester and founder of the International Society for Historical Lexicography, tells BBC Culture: “In 1567, a man called Thomas Harman published a word list that was supposedly the secret language of beggars – and then over the next couple of centuries, the same list was presented as the secret language of criminals in London then of highwaymen and then of gypsies.” When Grose published his book, she says, it presented some words that were “already over 200 years old”. While it was pioneering in its approach, the dictionary was also one of a long line of works that aimed to define the jargon of those on the fringes of society. “His was the first real ‘underground’ dictionary, compiled on evidence from the streets rather than the pages of literary works.” “Grose was one of a very small band of writers to explore popular culture at that time,” Dent tells BBC Culture. In A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries: Volume II, Julie Coleman argues: “Grose’s jargon belongs to a wide variety of occupations and pastimes, ranging from prostitutes, boxers, and cock-fighters to surveyors, stock-merchants and booksellers.” But The Vulgar Tongue also has a wider range of expressions.
There are plenty of terms in cant, or the language used by criminals – such as ‘Thatch-gallows: A rogue, or man of bad character’, and ‘Anglers: Pilferers, or petty thieves, who, with a stick having a hook at the end, steal goods out of shop windows’.
DICTIONARY OF SLANG WORDS PROFESSIONAL
According to the British Library, “Grose was one of the first lexicographers to collect slang words from all corners of society, not just from the professional underworld of pickpockets and bandits.” In the introduction to A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Grose claims to have overheard his terms from “soldiers on the long march, seamen at the capstern, ladies disposing of their fish, and the colloquies of a Gravesend boat”. As Dent says: “Grose’s sources were the ne’er-do-wells of London… His aim was to put on record a patois that had hitherto been shunned by collectors of language – an effort that was as courageous as it was unprecedented.” Published in 1785, 30 years after Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, Grose’s own effort at collecting the words of the time had a seedier side. Yet their focus couldn’t have been more different.” “The two men even shared the same ambition: to record faithfully the English of their day. “He too was a lexicographer, and his achievements equally extraordinary,” says the British language expert Susie Dent.
Francis Grose was one of the first to record phrases like ‘fly-by-night’ or ‘birds of a feather’ – and many believe he deserves to be as well-known as that more celebrated compiler of the English language, Samuel Johnson. He was a muse to Robert Burns a soldier with a penchant for port and an ‘antiquarian Falstaff’ who took midnight walks through London, eavesdropping in slums, drinking dens and dockyards.
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