Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 193

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the current health crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored….

Loll

This is a more upbeat (he often talks about all manner of negative and offensive terms) definition from Grose which is “mother’s loll; a favourite child, the mother’s darling”. I have no idea why the word would come to mean this, it’s from the word ‘lollen’, or to act in a lazy manner. I would have said that this has fallen out of usage, but I have heard children being referred to in this manner, so somehow this word has lingered on….