Auk's dimber tip to all flash coves

Dave Lebling · 12 Jul 2009, 21:51 · from 2009-July.txt.gz

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From: dlebling at hyraxes.com (Dave Lebling)
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:51:25 -0400
Subject: (urth) Auk's dimber tip to all flash coves
In-Reply-To: <cbf55b100907101953r25b14411me72992aa10875490 at mail.gmail.com>
References: <cbf55b100907090958g76c30a74wc96e9961cea9f66a at mail.gmail.com>	<44fb53d10907092123s5cc08821y5d88fe9e22031f17 at mail.gmail.com>	<cbf55b100907100516i520f2ceej7fd4d3d29ae0010a at mail.gmail.com>	<44fb53d10907101630y29f084f2j44d44fc0a77c58f9 at mail.gmail.com>
	<cbf55b100907101953r25b14411me72992aa10875490 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4A5A5ADD.3090003 at hyraxes.com>

My recollection is that "hoppy" was from the green uniforms of the 
Vironese police (by analogy with frogs).

I forget where "limer" and "mews" are used but they are perfectly good 
(if obscure) words. Limers are mentioned in books about the English 
underclass (Kellow Chesney's "The Victorian Underworld" is a good one -- 
Neil Gaiman recommends it and it's fascinating), where the word refers 
to people who catch birds using birdlime. "Hornboy" and "bucky" are not 
even completely obsolete today, if I twig their meanings ("catamite" and 
"buddy" respectively).

-- Dave Lebling, aka vizcacha

Gwern Branwen wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 7:30 PM, Matthew
> Keeley<matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> How about this 1811 dictionary? It has all three.
>>
>> http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5402
>>     
>
> That's certainly better; it has a few others - bob cull, 'scavey'
> (Wolfe spells it 'scavy'), cank, to twig, mort (but does Wolfe use
> mort just for women?), cits (but just in the preface, what good is
> that...)
>
> But not limer, mews, hornboy, hoppy, or bucky. Guess we need a few
> more dictionaries...
>
>   
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