Our Language is wonderfully rich and varied with many synonyms available to describe a concept or thing. Sometimes, though, it suits the speaker and their auditor to speak in a way that is intended to hide the meaning of their words from any eavesdropper. This deliberate attempt to exclude or mislead people, popular amongst groups keen to keep their true intentions secret, such as thieves or plotters or groups otherwise prone to persecution, led to the development of jargon or, perhaps even a language of its own, known as cant. Cant was rarely a complete stand-alone language in itself but allowed the speaker to sprinkle their sentences liberally with words that were mystifying to the uninitiated. Polari, popular with homosexuals, is a form of cant.

One of my favourite repositories of such words and phrases is Francis Grose’s A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, first published in 1785 and regularly reprinted after his death. In this series I will dip into the dictionary randomly or thematically and pick out some colourful words or phrases that have, lamentably, dropped out of fashion. Perhaps I will encourage a revival of their fortunes. You can never tell.

As a man who has been known to sup the odd flagon of ale from time to time, I would have been anxious to keep in the good books of the Admiral of the Blue, the landlord of a licensed establishment, so called, according to Grose, because of the custom amongst gentlemen of that vocation of wearing a blue apron. If I had been serving in His Majesty’s army, I would been keen to claim my Act of Parliament. This was a military term for small beer, “five pints of which, by Act of Parliament, a landlord was formerly obliged to each soldier gratis”.

I would be careful not to cast up my accounts, a rather colourful phrase for doing what the Australians call doing an upchucky, that is to say, to vomit. If I was lucky enough to secure a seat, I would want to avoid an admiral of the narrow seas, defined by Grose as “one who from drunkenness vomits into the lap of someone sitting opposite to him”.

After a session, a bit of tucker might not go amiss. I might want to get stuck into an Alderman, “a roasted turkey garnished with sausages. The latter are supposed to represent the gold chain worn by those magistrates”. Replete, I might want to take a boat or ferry back to my home. Best to be on the lookout for Ark ruffians. These, Grose described as, “rogues who, in conjunction with water-men, robbed, and sometimes murdered, on the water, by picking a quarrel with the passengers in a boat, boarding it, plundering, stripping, and throwing them overboard”.

More anon.