as a journalist remarks. The stage manager is familiarly termed DADDY; and an actor by profession, or a “professional,” is called a PRO. A man who is occasionally hired at a trifling remuneration to come upon the stage as one of a crowd, or when a number of actors are wanted to give effect, is named a SUP, – an abbreviation of “supernumerary.” A SURF is a third-rate actor who frequently pursues another calling; and the band, or orchestra between the pit and the stage, is generally spoken of as the MENAGERY. A BEN is a benefit; and SAL is the Slang abbreviation of “salary.” Should no wages be forthcoming on the Saturday night, it is said that the GHOST DOESN’T WALK. The travelling or provincial theatricals, who perform in any large room that can be rented in a country village, are called BARN STORMERS. A LENGTH is forty-two lines of any dramatic composition; and a RUN is the good or bad success of a performance. A SADDLE is the additional charge made by a manager to an actor or actress upon their benefit night. To MUG UP is to paint one’s face, or arrange the person to represent a particular character; to CORPSE, or to STICK, is to balk, or put the other actors out in their parts by forgetting yours. A performance is spoken of as either a GOOSER or a SCREAMER, should it be a failure or a great success; – if the latter, it is not infrequently termed a HIT. To STAR IT is to perform as the centre of attraction, with none but subordinates and indifferent actors in the same performance. The expressive term CLAP-TRAP, high-sounding nonsense, is nothing but an ancient theatrical term, and signified a TRAP to catch a CLAP by way of applause. “Up amongst the GODS,” refers to being among the spectators in the gallery, – termed in French Slang PARADIS.
There exists, too, in the great territory of vulgar speech what may not inappropriately be termed Civic Slang. It consists of mercantile and Stock Exchange terms, and the Slang of good living and wealth. A turkey hung with sausages is facetiously styled AN ALDERMAN IN CHAINS; and a half-crown, perhaps from its rotundity, is often termed an ALDERMAN. A BEAR is a speculator on the Exchange; and a BULL, although of another order, follows a like profession. There is something very humorous and applicable in the slang term LAME DUCK, a defaulter in stock-jobbing speculations. The allusion to his “waddling out of the Alley,” as they say, is excellent. Breaking shins, in City slang, is borrowing money; a rotten or unsound scheme is spoken of as FISHY; “RIGGING the market” means playing tricks with it; and STAG was a common term during the railway mania for a speculator without capital, a seller of “scrip” in “Diddlesex Junction” and other equally safe lines. In Lombard-street a MONKEY is £500, a PLUM £100,000, and a MARYGOLD is one million sterling. But before I proceed further in a sketch of the different kinds of Slang, I cannot do better than to speak here of the extraordinary number of Cant and Slang terms in use to represent money, – from farthings to bank notes the value of fortunes. Her Majesty’s coin, collectively or in the piece, is insulted, by no less than one hundred and thirty distinct Slang words, from the humble BROWN (a halfpenny) to FLIMSIES, or LONG-TAILED ONES (bank notes).
“Money,” it has been well remarked, “the bare, simple word itself, has a sonorous, significant ring in its sound,” and might have sufficed, one would have imagined, for all ordinary purposes. But a vulgar or “fast” society has thought differently, and so we have the Slang synonymes BEANS, BLUNT, (i. e., specie, – not stiff or rags, bank notes), BRADS, BRASS, BUSTLE, COPPERS (copper money, or mixed pence), CHINK, CHINKERS, CHIPS, CORKS, DIBBS, DINARLY, DIMMOCK, DUST, FEATHERS, GENT (silver, – from argent), HADDOCK (a purse of money), HORSE NAILS, LOAVER, LOUR (the oldest Cant term for money), MOPUSSES, NEEDFUL, NOBBINGS (money collected in a hat by street performers), OCHRE (gold), PEWTER, PALM OIL, QUEEN’S PICTURES, QUIDS, RAGS (bank notes), READY, or READY GILT, REDGE (gold), RHINO, ROWDY, SHINERS (sovereigns), SKIN (a purse of money), STIFF (paper, or bill of acceptance), STUFF, STUMPY, TIN (silver), WEDGE (silver), and YELLOW-BOYS (sovereigns); – just forty-two vulgar equivalents for the simple word money. So attentive is Slang speech to financial matters, that there are seven terms for bad, or “bogus” coin (as our friends, the Americans, call it): a CASE is a counterfeit five-shilling piece; HALF A CASE represents half that sum; GRAYS are halfpence made double for gambling purposes; QUEER-SOFT is counterfeit or lead coin; SCHOFEL refers to coated or spurious coin; SHEEN is bad money of any description; and SINKERS bears the same and not inappropriate meaning. Flying the kite, or obtaining money on bills and promissory notes, is a curious allusion to children tossing about a paper kite; and RAISING THE WIND is a well-known phrase for procuring money by immediate sale, pledging, or a forced loan. In winter or in summer any elderly gentleman who may have prospered in life is pronounced WARM; whilst an equivalent is immediately at hand in the phrase “his pockets are well LINED.” Each separate piece of money has its own Slang term, and often half a score of synonymes. To begin with that extremely humble coin, a farthing: first we have FADGE, then FIDDLER, then GIG, and lastly QUARTEREEN. A halfpenny is a BROWN or a MADZA SALTEE (Cant), or a MAG, or a POSH, or a RAP, – whence the popular phrase, “I don’t care a rap.” The useful and universal penny has for Slang equivalents a COPPER, a SALTEE (Cant), and a WINN. Two-pence is a DEUCE, and three-pence is either a THRUMS or a THRUPS. Four-pence, or a groat, may in vulgar speech he termed a BIT, a FLAG, or a JOEY. Six-pence is well represented in street talk, and some of the Slangisms are very comical, for instance, BANDY, BENDER, CRIPPLE, and DOWNER; then we have FYE-BUCK, HALF A HOG, KICK (thus “two and a kick,” or 2s. 6d.), LORD OF THE MANOR, PIG, POT (the price of a pot of beer), SNID, SPRAT, SOW’S BABY, TANNER, TESTER, TIZZY, – sixteen vulgar words to one coin. Seven-pence being an uncommon amount has only one Slang synonyme, SETTER. The same remark applies to eight-pence and nine-pence, the former being only represented by OTTER, and the latter by the Cant phrase, NOBBA-SALTEE. Ten-pence is DACHA-SALTEE, and eleven-pence DACHA-ONE, – both Cant expressions. One shilling boasts ten Slang equivalents; thus we have BEONG, BOB, BREAKY-LEG, DEANER, GEN (either from argent, silver, or the back slang), HOG, PEG, STAG, TEVISS, and TWELVER. Half-a-crown is known as an ALDERMAN, HALF A BULL, HALF A TUSHEROON, and a MADZA CAROON; whilst a crown piece, or five shillings, may be called either a BULL, or a CAROON, or a CARTWHEEL, or a COACHWHEEL, or a THICK-UN, or a TUSHEROON. The next advance in Slang money is ten shillings, or half-a-sovereign, which may be either pronounced as HALF A BEAN, HALF A COUTER, a MADZA POONA, or HALF A QUID. A sovereign, or twenty shillings, is a BEAN, CANARY, COUTER, FOONT, GOLDFINCH, JAMES, POONA, QUID, a THICK-UN, or a YELLOW-BOY. Guineas are nearly obsolete, yet the terms NEDS, and HALF NEDS, are still in use. Bank notes are FLIMSIES, LONG-TAILED ONES, or SOFT. A FINUF is a five-pound note. One hundred pounds (or any other “round sum”) quietly handed over as payment for services performed is curiously termed “a COOL hundred.” Thus ends, with several omissions, this long list of Slang terms for the coins of the realm, which for copiousness, I will engage to say, is not equalled by any other vulgar or unauthorised language in Europe.
The antiquity of many of these Slang names is remarkable. Winn was the vulgar term for a penny in the days of Queen Elizabeth; and TESTER, a sixpence (formerly a shilling), was the correct name in the days of Henry the Eighth. The reader, too, will have remarked the frequency of animals’ names as Slang terms for money. Little, as a modern writer has remarked, do the persons using these phrases know of their remote and somewhat classical origin, which may, indeed, be traced to the period antecedent to that when monarchs monopolised the surface of coined money with their own image and superscriptions. They are identical with the very name of money among the early Romans, which was pecunia, from pecus, a flock. The collections of coin dealers amply show that the figure of a HOG was anciently placed on a small silver coin; and that that of a BULL decorated larger ones of the same metal. These coins were frequently deeply crossed on the reverse; this was for the convenience of easily breaking them into two or more pieces, should the bargain for which they were employed require it, and the parties making it had no smaller change handy to complete the transaction. Thus we find that the HALF BULL of the itinerant street seller, or “traveller,”55 so far from being a phrase of modern invention, as is generally supposed, is in point of fact referable to an era extremely remote. There are many other Cant words directly from a classic source, as will be seen in the Dictionary.
Shopkeepers’ Slang is, perhaps,
See Dictionary.
