Part 35 (2/2)

GULLGROPERS. Usurers who lend money to the gamesters.

GUM. Abusive language. Come, let us have no more of your gum.

GUMMY. Clumsy: particularly applied to the ancles of men or women, and the legs of horses.

GUMPTION, or RUM GUMPTION. Docility, comprehension, capacity.

GUN. He is in the gun; he is drunk: perhaps from an allusion to a vessel called a gun, used for ale in the universities.

GUNDIGUTS. A fat, pursy fellow.

GUNNER'S DAUGHTER. To kiss the gunner's daughter; to be tied to a gun and flogged on the posteriors; a mode of punis.h.i.+ng boys on board a s.h.i.+p of war.

GUNPOWDER. An old Woman. CANT.

GUTS. My great guts are ready to eat my little ones; my guts begin to think my throat's cut; my guts curse my teeth: all expressions signifying the party is extremely hungry.

GUTS AND GARBAGE. A very fat man or woman. More guts than brains; a silly fellow. He has plenty of guts, but no bowels: said of a hard, merciless, unfeeling person.

GUTFOUNDERED. Exceeding hungry.

GUT Sc.r.a.pER, or TORMENTOR of CATGUT. A fiddler.

GUTTER LANE. The throat, the swallow, the red lane.

See RED LANE.

GUTTING A QUART POT. Taking out the lining of it: i. e.

drinking it off. Gutting an oyster; eating it. Gutting a house; clearing it of its furniture. See POULTERER.

GUY. A dark lanthorn: an allusion to Guy Faux, the princ.i.p.al actor in the gunpowder plot. Stow the guy: conceal the lanthorn.

GUZZLE. Liquor. To guzzle; to drink greedily.

GUZZLE GUTS. One greedy of liquor.

GYBE, or JYBE. Any writing or pa.s.s with a seal.

GYBING. Jeering or ridiculing.

GYLES, or GILES. Hopping Giles; a nick name for a lame person: St. Giles was the tutelar saint of cripples.

GYP. A college runner or errand-boy at Cambridge, called at Oxford a scout. See SCOUT.

GYPSIES. A set of vagrants, who, to the great disgrace of our police, are suffered to wander about the country.

They pretend that they derive their origin from the ancient Egyptians, who were famous for their knowledge in astronomy and other sciences; and, under the pretence of fortune-telling, find means to rob or defraud the ignorant and superst.i.tious. To colour their impostures, they artificially discolour their faces, and speak a kind of gibberish peculiar to themselves. They rove up and down the country in large companies, to the great terror of the farmers, from whose geese, turkeys, and fowls, they take very considerable contributions.

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