1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue Part 46

LICKSPITTLE. A parasite, or talebearer.

LIFT. To give one a lift; to a.s.sist. A good hand at a dead lift; a good hand upon an emergency. To lift one's hand to one's head; to drink to excess, or to drink drams. To lift or raise one's elbow; the same.

LIFT. See SHOPLIFTER, &c.

LIFTER. A crutch.

LIG. A bed. See LIB.

LIGHT BOB. A soldier of the light infantry company.

LIGHT-FINGERED. Thievish, apt to pilfer.

LIGHT-HEELED. Swift in running. A light-heeled wench; one who is apt, by the flying up of her heels, to fall flat on her back, a willing wench.

LIGHT HOUSE. A man with a red fiery nose.

LIGHT TROOPS. Lice; the light troops are in full march; the lice are crawling about.

LIGHTMANS. The day. CANT.

LIGHTNING. Gin. A flash of lightning; a gla.s.s of gin.

LIKENESS. A phrase used by thieves when the officers or turnkeys are examining their countenance. As the traps are taking our likeness; the officers are attentively observing us.

LILIPUTIAN. A diminutive man or woman: from Gulliver's Travels, written by Dean Swift, where an imaginary kingdom of dwarfs of that name is described.

LILY WHITE. A chimney-sweeper.

LILY SHALLOW. (WHIP SLANG) A white driving hat.

LIMBS. Duke of limbs; a tall awkward fellow.

LIMB OF THE LAW. An inferior or pettyfogging attorney.

LIMBO. A prison, confinement.

To LINE. A term for the act of coition between dog and b.i.t.c.h.

LINE OF THE OLD AUTHOR. A dram of brandy.

LINE. To get a man into a line, i.e. to divert his attention by a ridiculous or absurd story. To humbug.

LINGO. Language. An outlandish lingo; a foreign tongue.

The parlezvous lingo; the French language.

LINEN ARMOURERS. Taylors.

LION. To tip the lion; to squeeze the nose of the party tipped, flat to his face with the thumb. To shew the lions and tombs; to point out the particular curiosities of any place, to act the ciceroni: an allusion to Westminster Abbey, and the Tower, where the tombs and lions are shewn. A lion is also a name given by the gownsmen of Oxford to an inhabitant or visitor. It is a standing joke among the city wits to send boys and country folks, on the first of April, to the Tower-ditch, to see the lions washed.

LIQUOR. To liquor one's boots; to drink before a journey: among Roman Catholics, to administer the extreme unction.

LITTLE BARBARY. Wapping.

LITTLE BREECHES. A familiar appellation used to a little boy.

LITTLE CLERGYMAN. A young chimney-sweeper.

LITTLE EASE. A small dark cell in Guildhall, London, where disorderly apprentices are confined by the city chamberlain: it is called Little Ease from its being so low that a lad cannot stand upright in it.

LITTLE SNAKESMAN. A little boy who gets into a house through the sink-hole, and then opens the door for his accomplices: he is so called, from writhing and twisting like a snake, in order to work himself through the narrow pa.s.sage.

LIVE LUMBER. A term used by sailors, to signify all landsmen on board their s.h.i.+ps.

LIVE STOCK. Lice or fleas.

LOAF. To be in bad loaf, to be in a disagreeable situation, or in trouble.

LOB. A till in a tradesman's shop. To frisk a lob; to rob a till. See FLASH PANNEY.

LOB. Going on the lob; going into a shop to get change for gold, and secreting some of the change.

LOB'S POUND. A prison. Dr. Grey, in his notes on Hudibras, explains it to allude to one Doctor Lob, a dissenting preacher, who used to hold forth when conventicles were prohibited, and had made himself a retreat by means of a trap door at the bottom of his pulpit. Once being pursued by the officers of justice, they followed him through divers subterraneous pa.s.sages, till they got into a dark cell, from whence they could not find their way out, but calling to some of their companions, swore they had got into Lob's Pound.

LOBc.o.c.k. A large relaxed p.e.n.i.s: also a dull inanimate fellow.

LOBKIN. A house to lie in: also a lodging.

LOBLOLLEY BOY. A nick name for the surgeon's servant on board a man of war, sometimes for the surgeon himself: from the water gruel prescribed to the sick, which is called loblolley.

LOBONIAN SOCIETY. A society which met at Lob Hall, at the King and Queen, Norton Falgate, by order of Lob the great.

LOBSCOUSE. A dish much eaten at sea, composed of salt beef, biscuit and onions, well peppered, and stewed together.

LOBSTER. A nick name for a soldier, from the colour of his clothes. To boil one's lobster, for a churchman to become a soldier: lobsters, which are of a bluish black, being made red by boiling. I will not make a lobster kettle of my ****, a reply frequently made by the nymphs of the Point at Portsmouth, when requested by a soldier to grant him a favour.

LOCK. A scheme, a mode. I must fight that lock; I must try that scheme.

LOCK. Character. He stood a queer lock; he bore but an indifferent character. A lock is also a buyer of stolen goods, as well as the receptacle for them.

LOCK HOSPITAL. An hospital for venereal patients.

LOCK UP HOUSE. A spunging house; a public house kept by sheriff's officers, to which they convey the persons they have arrested, where they practise every species of imposition and extortion with impunity. Also houses kept by agents or crimps, who enlist, or rather trepan, men to serve the East India or African company as soldiers.

LOCKERAM-JAWED. Thin-faced, or lanthorn-jawed. See LANTHORN JAWED.

LOCKSMITH'S DAUGHTER. A key.

LOGGERHEAD. A blockhead, or stupid fellow. We three loggerheads be: a sentence frequently written under two heads, and the reader by repeating it makes himself the third. A loggerhead is also a double-headed, or bar shot of iron. To go to loggerheads; to fall to fighting.