The man who revelled in the vulgar tongue.

[wendy]

He was a muse to Robert Burns; a soldier with a penchant for port; and an ‘antiquarian Falstaff’ who took midnight walks through London, eavesdropping in slums, drinking dens and dockyards. Francis Grose was one of the first to record phrases like ‘fly-by-night’ or ‘birds of a feather’ – and many believe he deserves to be as well-known as that more celebrated compiler of the English language, Samuel Johnson.

“He too was a lexicographer, and his achievements equally extraordinary,” says the British language expert Susie Dent. “The two men even shared the same ambition: to record faithfully the English of their day. Yet their focus couldn’t have been more different.”

Published in 1785, 30 years after Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, Grose’s own effort at collecting the words of the time had a seedier side. As Dent says: “Grose’s sources were the ne’er-do-wells of London… His aim was to put on record a patois that had hitherto been shunned by collectors of language – an effort that was as courageous as it was unprecedented.”

In the introduction to A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Grose claims to have overheard his terms from “soldiers on the long march, seamen at the capstern, ladies disposing of their fish, and the colloquies of a Gravesend boat”. According to the British Library, “Grose was one of the first lexicographers to collect slang words from all corners of society, not just from the professional underworld of pickpockets and bandits.”
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201509 ... lthy-words

[JaneJ]

So interesting

[annie]

tha22222