Part 23 (2/2)

DILIGENT. Double diligent, like the Devil's apothecary; said of one affectedly diligent.

DILLY. (An abbreviation of the word DILIGENCE.) A public voiture or stage, commonly a post chaise, carrying three persons; the name is taken from the public stage vehicles in France and Flanders. The dillies first began to run in England about the year 1779.

DIMBER. Pretty. A dimber cove; a pretty fellow. Dimber mort; a pretty wench. CANT.

DIMBER DAMBER. A top man, or prince, among the canting crew: also the chief rogue of the gang, or the completest cheat. CANT.

DING. To knock down. To ding it in one's ears; to reproach or tell one something one is not desirous of hearing.

Also to throw away or hide: thus a highwayman who throws away or hides any thing with which he robbed, to prevent being known or detected, is, in the canting lingo, styled a Dinger.

DING BOY. A rogue, a hector, a bully, or sharper. CANT.

DING DONG. Helter skelter, in a hasty disorderly manner.

DINGEY CHRISTIAN. A mulatto; or any one who has, as the West-Indian term is, a lick of the tar-brush, that is, some negro blood in him.

DINING ROOM POST. A mode of stealing in houses that let lodgings, by rogues pretending to be postmen, who send up sham letters to the lodgers, and, whilst waiting in the entry for the postage, go into the first room they see open, and rob it.

DIP. To dip for a wig. Formerly, in Middle Row, Holborn, wigs of different sorts were, it is said, put into a close-stool box, into which, for three-pence, any one might dip, or thrust in his hand, and take out the first wig he laid hold of; if he was dissatisfied with his prize, he might, on paying three halfpence, return it and dip again.

THE DIP. A cook's shop, under Furnival's Inn, where many attornies clerks, and other inferior limbs of the law, take out the wrinkles from their bellies. DIP is also a punning name for a tallow-chandler.

DIPPERS. Anabaptists.

DIPT. p.a.w.ned or mortgaged.

DIRTY PUZZLE. A nasty s.l.u.t.

DISGUISED. Drunk.

DISGRUNTLED. Offended, disobliged.

DISHED UP. He is completely dished up; he is totally ruined.

To throw a thing in one's dish; to reproach or twit one with any particular matter.

DISHCLOUT. A dirty, greasy woman. He has made a napkin of his dishclout; a saying of one who has married his cook maid. To pin a dishclout to a man's tail; a punishment often threatened by the female servants in a kitchen, to a man who pries too minutely into the secrets of that place.

DISMAL DITTY. The psalm sung by the felons at the gallows, just before they are turned off.

DISPATCHES. A mittimus, or justice of the peace's warrant, for the commitment of a rogue.

DITTO. A suit of ditto; coat, waistcoat, and breeches, all of one colour.

DISPATCHERS. Loaded or false dice.

DISTRACTED DIVISION. Husband and wife fighting.

DIVE. To dive; to pick a pocket. To dive for a dinner; to go down into a cellar to dinner. A dive, is a thief who stands ready to receive goods thrown out to him by a little boy put in at a window. Cant.

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