Grose, Captain Francis

Captain Francis Grose (1731–1791) is a significant but not well-known figure in the history of foul language and obscenity, being the author of the most racy and entertaining work in the field, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785). Grose was an antiquary who wrote two substantial works, Antiquities of England and Wales (1773–1787) and A Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons (1785–1789). However, as the robust tone of his Classical Dictionary suggests, he was a noted character of the times, having been the paymaster of the Hampshire Militia from 1763 to 1769 and an innkeeper used to the hurly-burly and coarse speech of army and street life. “A veritable Falstaff of lexicographers, Grose was a hugely fat man whose servant allegedly strapped him into bed to prevent the covers slipping from his vast belly; he was well known for his consumption of porter [dark beer] and his telling of stories,” recounts Jonathon Green (1996, 232). Like Dr. Johnson, he was a “character,” a great bon viveur, humorist, and raconteur, whose personality shines through many of his entries.

The Classical Dictionary is an unexpected record of demotic English both in the date of its appearance and the comprehensiveness of its coverage. The eighteenth century was gener- ally a period of semantic conservatism very concerned with imposing order on the language and keeping the unruly and disreputable elements at bay. A number of major authors, including Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Richard Steele, and Joseph Addison wrote condemnations of the fashionable slang of the times. Defoe underlined the absurdity of such language in his “A Tilt at Profanity” in 1712: “at play it is G-d damn the cards; a-hunting G-d damn the hounds; they call dogs the sons of whores and men sons of bitches” (1951, 260). In his magisterial Dictionary of 1755 Dr. Johnson was especially condemning of “cant,” the perpetually flourishing but generally unstable language of the underworld, regarding it as “unworthy of preservation” (1963, 23).

Grose’s title, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue , is arresting in the contradiction of the key terms classical and vulgar , since the first implies formality and order, while the second now denotes the more disreputable elements of the language. Most works dealing with slang or underworld argot preferred titles that exploited the language itself, such as A Notable Discovery of Coosnage [trickery] by Robert Greene (1591). They had thrived in Elizabethan times, but were virtually unknown in the eighteenth century. Grose’s title brings out the semantic shift undergone by the term vulgar , which in its earlier sense meant simply the “common, ordinary or vernacular language used by the majority.” In time there developed more class-bound senses, referring to the language of those “not reckoned as belonging to good society” or “lacking in refinement and good taste, uncultured, ill-bred” (the definitions of the Oxford English Dictionary ). While the second exclusive sense seems the more fitting, the older meaning reminds us that vulgar has clear associations with the majority.

Various entries show that Grose’s sense of vulgar is close to what we would now call slang. For instance, he points out that devilish has virtually no literal force, meaning simply “very: an epithet which in the English vulgar language is made to agree with every quality of thing; as, devilish bad, devilish good; devilish sick, devilish well; devilish sweet, devilish sour; devilish hot, devilish cold, &c. &c.” He defines slang as “cant language” and canting as “a kind of gibberish used by thieves and gypsies, called likewise pedlars’ French, the slang, &c. &c.” In his Preface, Grose frankly advertises the usefulness of his volume:

The many vulgar allusions and cant expressions that so frequently occur in our common conversation and periodical publications, make a work of this kind extremely useful, if not absolutely necessary, not only to foreigners, but even to natives resident at a distance from the Metropolis…. [since it contains] terms of well-known import at Newmarket [racecourse], Exchange-alley [the Stock Exchange], the City [the mercantile center] … and Newgate [the principal jail].

Grose’s work is an exuberantly witty thesaurus containing approximately 3,500 entries, many of them concerned with the underworld or the seamy side of life. Seldom judgmental, Grose simply records the terms, adding a dry or humorous definition. Typical examples are abbess , “a bawd, the mistress of a brothel”; academy or pushing school , “a brothel”; active citizen , “a louse”; covent garden nun , “a prostitute”; thingumbob s, “testicles”; bumbo , “brandy, water and sugar; also the negro name for the private parts of a woman”; scotch warming pan , “a wench, also a fart”; scourers , “riotous bucks [decadent men about town], who amuse themselves with breaking windows, beating the watch [police], and assaulting every person they meet”; buss beggar , “an old superannuated fumbler, whom none but beggars will suffer to kiss them”; rushers , “thieves who knock at the great houses in London, in summer time, when the families are gone out of town, and on the door being opened by a woman, rush in and rob the house”; riding St. George , “the woman uppermost in the amorous congress, that is to say the dragon upon St. George”; molly: A miss Molly , “an effeminate fellow, a sodomite.”

Grose also records, frequently for the first time, slang words that are still current. These include to hump , “once a fashionable word for copulation”; to screw , “to copulate”; to shag , “to copulate”; a beak , “a justice of the peace or magistrate”; to fence , “to pawn or sell to a receiver of stolen goods”; Yankey or Yankey Doodle: “a booby, or country lout: a name given to the New England men in North America. A general appellation for an American”; to kick the bucket , “to die”; swig , “a hearty draught of liquor”; buggy , “a one-horse chaise”; brat , “a child or infant”; bum , “the breech, or backside”; birthday suit , “stark naked”; to swing , “to be hanged”; to shoot the cat , “to vomit from excess of liquor”; and shrimp , “a little diminutive person.”

However, Grose ventures further into the area of obscenity than any of his contemporaries, including the following: cundum , “the dried gut of a sheep, worn by men in the act of coition, to prevent venereal infection”; c**t; duck f-ck-r , “the man who has the care of the poultry on board a ship of war”; burning shame , “a lighted candle stuck into the parts of a woman, certainly not intended by nature for a candlestick”; buttock ball , “the amorous congress”; bob tail , “a lewd woman, or one that plays with her tail; also an impotent man or a eunuch”; to blow the grounsils , “to lie with a woman on the floor”; bunter , “a low dirty prostitute, half whore and half beggar”; bum fodder , “soft paper for the necessary house”; to roger , “to lie with a woman.”

Although his entries are usually brief and to the point, Grose often elaborates, as with bitch: “a she dog or doggess; the most offensive appellation that can be given to an English woman, even more provoking than that of whore.” He also provides interesting etymologies, such as that for coxcomb: “Anciently, a fool. Fools, in great families, wore a cap with bells, on the top of which was a piece of red cloth, in the shape of cock’s comb. At present, coxcomb signifies a fop, or vain self-conceited fellow.” Similar explanations are provided for to send one to Coventry, covent garden, salmon-gundy (i.e., salmagundy ), and billingsgate language: “Foul language, or abuse. Billingsgate is the market where the fishwomen assemble to purchase fish; and where, in their dealings and disputes, they are somewhat apt to leave decency and good manners a little on the left hand.”

Grose’s confidence in his Dictionary was well placed: a second edition came out in 1788 and a third in 1796. For decades it was plagiarized, extended, and revised. The most accessible version is the expanded edition by Eric Partridge first published in 1931 and since available in various formats.