Hotton's slang Dictionary.
Mr. Hotton's list does not contain the word canter, which was primitively a slang word for the amble of horses of the pilgrims on their way to Canterbury.--The word has suffered diminution, as most popular words have done. We generally lop off either the first or the last syllables. Fifty years ago we had Bony for "Bonaparte," as we now have, by amputation at the other end, bus for "omnibus," and again, by the first method, cab for "cabriolet." The word "cab" is now a recognized English word. Canter did not so speedily arrive at being accepted as good English. So late a writer as Shaftesbury, in his "Characteristics," uses the full word. "The common amble, or Canterbury," he says, "is not more tiresome to a good writer than the see-saw of essay writers is to an able reader." The word "cant" itself — if not derived from singing, whining, canting — may come from this same source.There are slang words which have become accepted English. There are also good old English words which have become slang. Mr. Hotton should have notices this when he defined the word "gent" as "a contraction of gentleman, in more senses than one. A dressy, showy, foppish man, with a little mind, who vulgarizes the prevailing fashion." Gent was, however, once a well-reputed word, as an adjective; and when Spenser wrote "He loved, as was his lot, a lady gent," and "A knight had wrought against a lady gent," he implied a compliment the very reverse of what such words would carry with them now. At another word, Gonnof, applied to a "fool, a bungler, an amateur pickpocket, " we find Mr. Hotton all abroad again for its derivation. He refers to Chancer's "Country gnoffes, Bob, Dick and Hick," but there the word means simply knaves. If the editor had applied to any one of the Jew "fencers," whence some of the knowledge in this book is derived, he would have heard that gonnof is Hebrew for "a thief." Curiously enough, too, he defines "John" as an "old slang term for a coachman, or one fond of driving," but does not record the derivation of the burnt from that charactering king of Israel whom the watchman recognized by his furious dirving. Still worse, he suggests that "Go to Jericho!" "is probably derived from Johanum. He might as well have derived "Hey-Day!" from "Hades." He says of the American "Skedaddle": "The word is very fair Greek, the root being that of Skedanumi, to disperse, to retire tumultuously, and it was probably set afloat by some professor at Harvard." This is more than doubtful. On the Greek origin of "Lord," as applied to those who are vulgarly called "hunchbacks," Mr. Hotton is silent. It is from Aogdoc, bent. He has also strangely omitted what may be termed the typographical slang word "Colophon," the very curious history and application of which we hope to find in his next edition. Churchmen used, and scholars still use, this word.--The church, indeed, has not been "slack" in introducing cant terms. Miscreant, Heathen and Pagan are of primeval slang, implying unbeliever, hedge dweller and country-fellow. "All my eye and Betty Martin" is said to be a satirical allusion to a Romish prayer, "Oh mihi betie Martine!" While "Please the Pigs," which Mr. Hotton omits, is another form of "Please the Pyx!" Mr. Hotton omits, too, "Mother Cary's Chickens, " the sailors' slang for snow; the "Mother Cary" being the Mata Cara, the virgin mother of the Levantine sailors, to whom we also owe the name of Petrel, or Petrillo, "little Peter," because he walks the water like the Apostle.-- London Athenœum.
