Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Eighty-Six

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

Comus’s Court

A little bit niche perhaps, the dictionary defines this as “a social meeting formerly held at the Half Moon tavern in Cheapside”. This London pub operated from at least the mid-seventeenth century until 1817, by which time it had become known as the New London Tavern. It’s so niche as to not really be relevant to most of its readers even at the time, but it does paint a picture of what London was like at the end of the eighteenth century.