Fornicator’s Hall, subs. phr. (venery).—The female pudendum. For
synonyms, see Monosyllable.
Fort, subs. (venery).—The female pudendum. For synonyms, see
Monosyllable.
1620. Percy, Folio MSS. [Hales & Furnivall, 1867]. ‘Come, Wanton
Wenches.’ When they your ffort beleauger; grant but a touch or a
kisse ffor a tast.
Fortune-biter, subs. (obsolete).—A sharper.
1719. Durfey, Pills, etc., ii. ‘Hey! for Richmond Ball’!
Fortune-biters, Hags, bum-fighters, Nymphs of the Woods, And stale
City goods.
Fortune-teller, subs. (old).—A magistrate.
1690. B. E., Dict. of the Canting Crew. Fortune-tellers, c. the
Judges of Life and Death, so-called by the Canting Crew.
1785. Grose, Dict. of the Vulg. Tongue. Fortune-teller, or cunning
man; a judge who tells every prisoner his fortune, lot, or doom; to
go before the fortune-teller, lambskin man or conjuror, to be tried
at an assize.
1871. Egan, Finish of Tom and Jerry, p. 242. He had been werry
cruelly used by the fortune-tellers.
Forty. To talk forty (more commonly nineteen) to the dozen, verb. phr.
(colloquial).—To chatter incessantly; to gabble. To walk off forty to
the dozen = to decamp in quick time.
1891. Farjeon, Mystery of M. Felix, p. 107. He run agin me, he did,
and I ased, ‘Who are yer pushing of?’ He didn’t say nothink, but
walked off forty to the dozen.
Roaring forties, subs. phr. (nautical).—The Atlantic between the
fortieth and fiftieth degrees of latitude; also applied to the same
region in southern latitudes.
Forty-faced, adj. (colloquial).—An arrant deceiver: e.g., a forty-faced
liar, a forty-faced flirt, and so forth.
Forty-five, subs. (American).—A revolver. For synonyms, see Meat in the
pot.
Forty-foot or Forty-guts, subs. (common).—A fat, dumpy man, or woman.
In contempt.
English Synonyms.—‘All arse, and no body’; arse-and-corporation;
all-belly (Cotgrave); all guts (idem); bacon-belly; barrel-belly;
belly-god; bladder-figured; bosse-belly; Bosse of Billingsgate (Florio
= a fat woman); chuff (Shakspeare); Christmas beef; double-guts;
double-tripe; fat-cock; fat-guts (Shakspeare and Cotgrave); fatico;
fattymus or fattyma; fubsy; fat Jack of the bonehouse; fat-lips;
flanderkin; fustiluggs (Burton); fussock; gorbelly; grampus;
gotch-guts; grand-guts (Florio); gulche (Florio); gullyguts;
gundigutts; guts; guts-and-stomach; guts-and-garbage; guts-to-sell;
hoddy-doddy; humpty-dumpty; hogshead; hopper-arse; Jack Weight;
loppers; lummox; paunch; pod; porpoise; pot-guts; princod;
pudding-belly; puff-guts; ribs;
‘short-and-thick-like-a-Welshman’s-cock’; slush-bucket; sow (a fat
woman); spud; squab; studgy-guts; tallow-guts; tallow-merchant;
thick-in-the-middle; tripes; tripes and trullibubs; tubs; waist;
water-butt; walking ninepin; whopper.
French Synonyms. Un gros bajaf (popular); un bout de cul (popular); un
bas de plafond, or de cul (popular); un brasset (= a tall, stout man);
un berdouillard.
Spanish Synonym. Angelon de retablo (generally applied to a pot-bellied
child).
Forty-jawed, adj. (colloquial).—Excessively talkative.
Forty-lunged, adj. (colloquial).—Stentorian; given to shouting;
leather-lunged (q.v.).
Forty-rod or Forty-rod Lightning, subs. phr. (American).—Whiskey;
specifically, spirit of so fiery a nature that it is calculated to kill
at Forty Rods’ distance, i.e., on sight. Cf., Rot-gut. For synonyms,
see Drinks and Old man’s milk. Cf., Florio (1598), Catoblepa, ‘a
serpent in India so venomous that with his looke he kils a man a mile
off.’
1884. M. Twain, Huck. Finn, ch. v., p. 36. He got powerful thirsty
and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion, and
traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod.
Forty-twa, subs. (Scots).—A common jakes, or bogshop (q.v.).—In
Edinburgh: ‘so called from its accommodating that number of persons at
once’ (Hotten). [Long a thing of the past.]
Forty Winks, subs. phr. (colloquial).—A short sleep or nap. See Dog’s
Sleep.
1866. G. Eliot, Felix Holt, ch. xliii. She was prevented by the
appearance of old Mr. Transome, who since his walk had been having
‘forty-winks’ on the sofa in the library.
1871. Egan, Finish to Tom and Jerry, p. 87. On uncommanly big
gentlemen, told out, taking forty-winks.
[Forty is often used to signify an indefinite number; cf.,
Shakespeare’s usage, ‘I could beat forty of them’ (Cor. iii., 1);
‘O that the slave had forty thousand lives’ (Othello iii., 1);
‘forty thousand brothers’ (Hamlet, v., 1); ‘The Humour of Forty
Fancies’ (Taming of the Shrew); and Jonson ‘Some forty boxes’
(Silent Woman).]
Fossed, ppl. adj. (American thieves’).—Thrown; cf., [foss = a ditch].
Fossick, verb (Australian miners’).—To work an abandoned claim, or to
wash old dirt; hence to search persistently. [Halliwell: = to take
trouble, but cf., fosse, a ditch or excavation.] Also fossicking = a
living got as aforesaid; fossicker = a man that works abandoned claims;
fossicking about = (American) shinning around, or in England ferreting
(q.v.).
1870. Notes and Queries, 4 S., vi., p. 3.
1878. Fraser’s Mag., Oct., p. 449, They are more suited ... to
plodding, fossicking, persevering industry, than for hard work.
1887. Sala, in Ill. Lond. News, 12 Mar., p. 282, col. 2. ‘To
fossick’ in the old digging days was to get a living by extracting
gold from the refuse wash-dirt which previous diggers had abandoned
as worthless.
1890. Illustrations, Jan., p. 158. After some ‘fossiking’ we
discover three or four huts within ‘cooee,’ all diggers, all
‘hatters,’ and mostly good fellows.
Fou, or Fow, adj. (old English and Scots’ colloquial).—Drunk; variants
are bitch-fou; greetin’-fou; piper-fou; roaring-fou; fou as barty
(Burns); pissing-fou; and so forth. For synonyms, see Drinks and
Screwed. Also (Scots’) = full of food or drink, as in quot. under date
1815.
1697. Vanbrugh, Provoked Wife, III., ii. (quoted in). Then sit ye
awhile, and tipple a bit, For we’s not very fou, but we’re gayly
yet.
1787. Burns, Death and Dr. Hornbook, st. 3. I was na fou, but just
had plenty.
1815. Scott, Guy Mannering, ch. xlvi. ‘Are ye fou or fasting?’
‘Fasting from all but sin.’
1857. J. E. Ritchie, Night Side of London, p. 166. The time admits
of a man getting fou between the commencement and the close of the
entertainment.
Foul, subs. (nautical and aquatic).—A running into; a running down.
Verb. (idem).—To run against; to run down. Also to come (or fall) foul
of.
[Foul, adj. and verb. is used in two senses: (1) = dirty, as a foul
word, a foul shrew (Dickens), to foul the bed, &c.; and (2) =
unfair, as a foul (i.e., a felon) stroke, a foul blow, and so
forth.]
1626. Captain John Smith, Accidence for Seamen, in wks. (Arber), p.
796. Boord and boord, or thwart the hawse, we are foule on each
other.
1724. E. Coles, Eng. Dict. Foul, hindred or intangled with another
ship’s ropes, etc.
1754. Connoisseur, No. 3. Which sailed very heavy, were often
a-ground, and continually ran foul on each other.
1861. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford, ch. xiii. Their coxswain ... had
to pull his left hand hard or they would have fouled the
Oxfordshire corner.
1885 Illus. London News, March 28, p. 316, col. 1. In 1849 there
were two races in the course of the year; Cambridge won the first,
Oxford the second, on a foul (the only time the race has been so
won).
1889. Licensed Victuallers’ Gaz., 18 Jan. Dick was done out of the
stakes on an appeal of foul.
To foul a plate with, verbal phr. (old, colloquial).—To dine or sup
with.—Grose.
Foulcher, subs. (thieves’).—A purse.
1877. Five Years’ Penal Servitude, ch. iii., p. 243. ‘A foulcher,
with flimsies and couters for a score of quid in it.’
Foul-mouthed, adj. (colloquial).—Obscene or blasphemous in speech.
Found in a Parsley-bed. See Parsley-bed and Gooseberry-bush.
Fountain of Love, subs. phr. (venery).—The female pudendum. For
synonyms, see Monosyllable.
Four-and-nine (or Four-and-ninepenny), subs. phr. (old).—A hat.
[So-called from the price at which an enterprising Bread Street hatter
sold his hats, circa 1844, at which date London was hideous with
posters displaying a large black hat and ‘4s. and 9d.’ in white
letters.]
1844. Advertisement Couplet. Whene’er to slumber you incline, Take
a short nap at four-and-nine.
1846. Thackeray, Yellow Plush Papers, p. 152 (ed. 1887). You may,
for instance, call a coronet a coronal (an ‘ancestral coronal,’ p.
74) if you like, as you might call a hat a ‘swart sombrero,’ a
‘glossy four-and-nine,’ ‘a silken helm to storm impermeable, and
lightsome as the breezy gossamer;’ but in the long run it is safer
to call it a hat.
1847. Thackeray, Mrs. Perkins’s Ball (The Mulligan). The Mulligan
has withdrawn his custom from the ‘infernal four-and-ninepenny
scoundthrel,’ as he calls him. The hatter has not shut up shop in
consequence.
1849. Viator, Oxford Guide. He then did raise his four-and-nine,
And scratched his shaggy pate.
1867. Jas. Greenwood, Unsent. Journeys, xxx., 229. Because he wore
a four-and-nine, and had a pencil stuck behind his ear.
Four-bones, subs. (thieves’).—The knees.
1857. Punch, 31 Jan. ‘Dear Bill, This Stone-jug.’ For them coves in
Guildhall and that blessed Lord Mayor, Prigs on their four bones
should chop whiners I swear.
Four-eyes, subs. (common).—A person in spectacles: ‘a chap that can’t
believe his own eyes.’
Four-holed Middlings, subs. phr. (Winchester College).—Ordinary walking
shoes; cf. beeswaxers. Obsolete.
Four Kings. The history (or book) of the four kings. subs. phr.
(old).—A pack of cards; otherwise, a child’s best guide to the gallows,
or the devil’s picture books. Fr., Livre des quatre rois.
Four-legged burglar-alarm, subs. phr. (common).—A watch dog.
Four-legged Frolic, subs. phr. (venery).—The act of kind: a
reminiscence of the proverb, ‘There goes more to a marriage than four
bare legs in a bed.’ For synonyms, see Greens and Ride.
Four-poster, subs. phr. (colloquial).—A four-post bedstead.
1836. Dickens, Pickwick, ch. xliv. ‘Vill you allow me to en-quire
vy you make up your bed under that ere deal table?’ said Sam.
‘’Cause I was alvays used to a four-poster afore I came here, and I
find the legs of the table answer just as well,’ replied the
cobbler.
Four Seams and a Bit of Soap, subs. phr. (tailors’).—A pair of
trousers. See Kicks.
Four—(more commonly Three)—Sheets in the Wind, adv. phr.
(nautical).—Drunk; cf., half seas over. For synonyms, see Drinks and
Screwed.
Fourteen Hundred, ... phr. (Stock Exchange).—A warning cry that a
stranger is in the ‘House.’
1887. Atkin, House Scraps. So, help me Got, Mo, who is he? Instead
of replying in a straightforward way, Mo raised his voice as loud
as he could, and shouted with might and main, ‘fourteen hundred new
fives!’ A hundred voices repeated the mysterious exclamation.
1890. Cassell’s Saturday Journal, 26 April. The cry of ‘fourteen
hundred’ is said to have had its origin in the fact that for a long
while the number of members never exceeded 1,399; and it was
customary to hail every new comer as the fourteen hundredth. It
has, in its primary sense, long since lost significance, for there
are now nearly three thousand members of the close corporation
which has its home in Capel Court.
Fourteenth Amendment Persuasion, subs. phr. (American).—Negroes. [From
the number of the clause amending the Constitution at the abolition of
slavery.]
1888. Times Democrat, 5 Feb. To take the law is one of the greatest
privileges in the estimation of the colored folk that the
fourteenth amendment conferred, and, whether offender or defendant,
they take a pride in summonses beyond describing.
Fourth, subs. (Cambridge University).—A rear (q.v.) or jakes. [Origin
uncertain; said to have been first used at St. John’s or Trinity, where
the closets were situated in the Fourth Court. Whatever its derivation,
the term is now the only one in use at Cambridge, and is frequently
heard outside the university.] The verbal phrase is to keep a fourth
(see Keep).
On his fourth, phr. (common).—Hopelessly drunk. For synonyms, see
Drinks and Screwed.
Fourth Estate, subs. phr. (literary).—The body of journalists; the
‘Press.’ [Literally the Fourth Estate of the realm, the other three
being Queen, Lords, and Commons.]
1855. Notes and Queries. 1 S. xi., p. 452.
1857. J. E. Ritchie, Night Side of London, p. 202. Let me say a
word about these exceedingly seedy-looking individuals connected
with the fourth estate.
Four-wheeler, subs. (common).—A steak.