A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

[Francis Grose]

A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

London

S. Hooper

1785

Grose’s concern was not the language as a whole but the “vulgar” (common) speech, including slang and “cant” (the jargon of thieves and beggars). Although all dictionaries involve some degree of plagiarism, it’s especially prominent in slang lexicography. Most of Grose’s entries are taken from B.E.’s New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew (1699). But B.E.’s ghost had no grounds to complain, since many of his entries had been stolen from Richard Head’s Canting Vocabulary (1673). 

Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 110