These words come from Hotten’s work and relate to fashion, tailoring, and textiles, which were significant trades in 19th-century Britain. Many of these terms originated from tailors’ cant (slang used by tailors), fabric merchants, and the garment industry. Some also reflect class distinctions, criminal slang, or workwear terminology.

John Camden Hotten (1832–1873) was an English publisher, lexicographer, and antiquarian known for compiling slang dictionaries and documenting the language of the underworld, including criminals, tradesmen, and working-class subcultures. His most famous work from where these words are sourced, "A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words" (1859), recorded the informal and underground language of Victorian England.

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Term

Definition

Comment

All-rounder

A shirt collar going all round the neck and meeting in front.

Once fashionable, but little worn now.

Bags

Trousers of an extensive pattern, or exaggerated fashion, have sometimes been termed howling-bags, but only when the style has been very “loud.”

The word is probably an abbreviation of bumbags. “To have the bags off,” to be of age and one’s own master, to have plenty of money. Bags of mystery is another phrase in frequent use, and refers to sausages and saveloys. Bag of tricks, refers to the whole of a means towards a result. “ That’s the whole bag of tricks.”

Blue Blanket

A rough overcoat made of coarse pilot cloth.

Broady

Cloth.

Evidently a corruption of broadcloth. Broady workers are men who go round selling vile shoddy stuff under the pretence that it is excellent material, which has been “got on the cross,” i.e. stolen.

Build

Applied in fashionable slang to the make or style of dress, etc.

“ It’s a tidy build, who made it ?” A tailor is sometimes called a “ trousers’ BUILDER.”

Cabbage

Pieces of cloth said to be purloined by tanors.

Any small profits in the way of material.

Cardinal

A lady’s red cloak.

A cloak with this name was in fashion in the year 1760. It received its title from its similarity in shape to one of the vestments of a cardinal. Also mulled red wine.

Castor

A hat.

Mostly used in pugilistic circles. Indeed many hangerson of the P.R. have considered that the term arose from the custom of casting the hat into the ring, before entering oneself. CASTOR was the Latin name for the animal now known as the BEAVER ; and, strange to add, beaver was the slang for CASTOR, or hat, many years ago, before gossamer came into fashion.

Chitterlings

The shirt frills once fashionable and worn still by ancient beaux ; properly the entrails of a pig , to which they are supposed to bear some resemblance.

Belgian schyterlingh.

Commission [mish]

A shirt.

Devil’s dust

A term used in the manufacturing districts of Yorkshire to denote shreds of old cloth tom up to re-manufacture ; also called shoddy. Mr. Ferrand, in his speech in the House, March 4, 1842, produced a piece of cloth made chiefly from devil’s dust, and tore it into shreds to prove its worthlessness. — See Hansard' s Parliamentary Debates , third series, vol. lxi. p. 140.

Dickey

Formerly the cant for a worn-out shirt, but nowadays used for a front or half-shirt.

Dickey was originally “tommy” (from the Greek, τμήμα, a section), a name which was formerly used in Trinity College, Dublin. The students are said to have invented the term, and love of change and circumlocution soon changed it to dickey, in which dress it is supposed to have been imported into England.

Dude

Clothes

Dungaree

Low, common, coarse, vulgar. — Anglo-Indian.

Dungaree is the name of a disreputable suburb of Bombay, and also of a coarse blue cloth worn by sailors.

Flesh bag

A shirt.

American humourists call a white shirt a “clean biledrag.” In the mining camps, and rough parts generally, a white shirt is called a “biled shirt” to distinguish it from the usual woollen garment, which cannot be boiled.

Gills

Overlarge shirt collars.

Goose

A tailor's smoothing iron

Kincob

Uniform, fine clothes, richly embroidered dresses.

Really, cloth of gold or silver. — Anglo-Indian.

Lag of dudes

A bucket (or basket) of clothes

Lully

A shirt.

Maidstone jailer

A tailor.

Mish

A shirt, or chemise.

From COMMISSION, the ancient cant for a shirt, afterwards shortened to k’mish or SMISH, and then to MISII. French, CHEMISE ; Italian , CAMICIA.

Narp

A shirt.

Scotch.

Palampo

A quilt or bed-cover.

Probably from Palanpore, a town in India, renowned for its manufacture of chintz counterpanes. — AngloIndian.

Panupetaston

A loose overcoat with wide sleeves, now out of fashion.

Oxford University

Peaking

Remnants of cloth.

Term amongst drapers and cloth warehousemen.

PegtOpS

The loose trousers in fashion some years back, small at the ankle and swelling upwards, in imitation of the Zouave costume.

Petticoat

A woman.

Roil me in the dirt

A shirt.

Shaker

A shirt.

Shoddy

Old cloth worked up into new

Made from soldiers’ and policemen’s coats. The old cloth is pulled to pieces, the yam unravelled and carded over again. This produces shoddy, which is very short in the fibre, and from it are produced, on again twisting and weaving, cloth fabrics used for ladies’ mantles, etc. Also, a term of derision applied to workmen in woollen factories. — Yorkshire.

Shoe leather !

A thief’s warning cry when he hears footsteps.

This exclamation is used in the spirit which animated the friend who, when he suspected treachery towards Bruce at King Edward’s court, in 1306, sent him a purse and a pair of spurs, as a sign that he should use them in making his escape.

Side-boards, or STICK-UPS

Shirt collars.

Name applied some years ago, before the present style of collars came into fashion.

Smish

A shirt, or chemise.

Springer-up

A tailor who sells low-priced ready-made clothing, and gives starvation wages to the poor men and women who “make up” for him.

The clothes are said to be sprung-up, or “blown together.”

Stab-ra

A regimental tailor.

Military Slang.

Stampers

Shoes

Stangey

A tailor , a person under petticoat government

derived from the custom of “ riding the stang,” mentioned in Hudibras : —"Petticoat government" is a phrase used to describe a government run by women, and was used in literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. The phrase is often used in a positive way to welcome women in government.

Sweater

Common term for a “cutting” or “grinding” employer,— one who sweats his workpeople.

A cheap tailor, who pays starvation wages.

Tanner and Skin

Money in the leather-dresser's trade

Vamps

Old or refooted stockings.

The term is still used in Newfoundland to denote a heavy woolen sock usually extending to ankle height.

Weaving leather aprons

This is a device used to avoid making a direct answer to a question about one's activities.