Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 201

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….

Malkin or Maulkin

This is one of Grose’s longer definitions, which is “a general name for a cat; also a parcel of rags fastened to the end of a stick, to clean an oven; also a figure set up in a garden to scare the birds; likewise an awkward woman. The cove’s so scaly, he’d spice a malkin of his jazey: the fellow is so mean, that he would rob a scare-crow of his old wig”.

Another definition in this book, that of Grimalkin, is very similar, and these words are the origin of the name Matilda.

The word was used much more in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, generally fading away since, although it’s perhaps a more intriguing word than just saying ‘cat’.