by Daniel Pool
brazier—A man who made things out of brass.
breach of promise—In the old days, if either party broke off an engagement, the other could sue just as if any other kind of contract to do something had been broken. The plaintiff was entitled to his or her actual damages sustained in anticipation of the promised event, e.g., the cost of a wedding dress, plus any award the jury might want to make to compensate the aggrieved party for anguish and suffering.
breakfast room—A room likely to be found in somewhat grander homes, which was used for the morning meal instead of the dining room, which was saved for the more formal dinners. Lunch, perhaps because only the ladies usually dined at home, had no room of its own.
breeches—A word used during the first part of the century to mean pants that descended only to the knee and were worn with stockings. It retained this meaning thereafter when applied to footmen, whose livery was deliberately anachronistic until the end of the century. In other contexts, it came to mean simply a pair of trousers.
brevet—A brevet commission entitled one to be called by the military rank next higher than that which one actually held. Thus, a brevet captain would actually be a lieutenant. A brevet rank did not entitle one to the additional pay that normally accompanied the higher rank.
brier rose—The dog rose.
bridewell—A contraction from St. Bridget’s Well in London, the site of a house of correction (torn down in 1863) that gave its name generically to houses of correction.
brief—A summary of a client’s case prepared by a solicitor before he hired a barrister to take it to trial. To be a “briefless barrister” meant you had no work. In Vanity Fair Thackeray alludes to “Mrs. Briefless, the barrister’s wife, who is of a good family certainly, but, as we all know, is as poor as poor can be.”
brig—Generally, a square-rigged ship with two masts.
brigade—An army unit, usually composed of at least two regiments.
Brighton—A seaside resort that became fashionable in the early 1800s, owing to an emphasis on the health benefits said to be derived from regular immersion in salt water. Perhaps chiefly notable for the construction of a monstrous imitation Near Eastern villa by the prince regent. In Mansfield Park we are told the resort was “almost as gay in winter as it is in summer.” It was about forty-five miles south of London.
Broad Church—An element within the Church of England that favored tolerance of both High and Low Church tendencies.
broadcloth—A fancy kind of woolen that was made from yarns of fine merino.
brocade—A material that had elaborate designs of raised gold and silver or something similar on it.
broker—Sometimes used to mean a stockbroker or pawnbroker. The term was also applied to a secondhand furniture dealer licensed to appraise household goods or sell them when someone fell behind on the rent. In one of his frequent epistolary communications of disaster, Micawber writes to David Copperfield that he is being watched over by a drunk “employed by a broker. That individual is in legal possession of these premises, under a distress for rent.” Less often, perhaps, the term “broker” might have been used to refer to the bill brokers who bought and sold bills of exchange.
broomstick, over the—One way of getting married in some rural areas of England was for the couple to jump over a broomstick together.
brougham—The all-purpose everyday vehicle for the quality in the latter part of the century. It was originally a two-wheel vehicle designed in imitation of the cabriolet, the point being to combine the features of the two-wheel open vehicles like gigs and curricles with the closed character of the cabriolet. However, in the latter part of the century broughams were probably most often four-wheel carriages.
Brummagem—From Birmingham, meaning in some instances, cheap, shoddy goods.
brush—In fox hunting, the term for the fox’s tail. Sometimes cut off at the end of the hunt and given as a trophy. In Silas Marner Squire Cass’s parlor has “walls decorated with guns, whips, and foxes’ brushes.”
buckram—A linen or other cloth that has been made stiff with glue, paste or gum.
buckskins—Made originally from deerskin and very fashionable in the early part of the century. Later made out of sheepskin as well.
buff—Short for buffalohide. In color, light or yellowish.
buggy—A one- or two-passenger carriage pulled by one horse.
bull—Slang for a crown or a five-shilling piece.
bulldog—One of the men who helped the proctors at Oxford and Cambridge to discipline rule-breaking undergraduates. Trollope tells us in Phineas Finn that Lord Chiltern “had taken by the throat a proctor’s bull-dog when he had been drunk at Oxford, had nearly strangled the man, and had been expelled.”
bull’s-eye—A kind of lantern, so called because the swelling in the glass looked like the eye of a bull.
bumper—A glass of liquor that had been filled to the very top.
burdock—A weedlike plant, found in unpromising, desolate areas, whose flower was a burr.
burgess—An inhabitant of a borough who was entitled—at least in theory—to enjoy the privileges thereof.
burk—The verb means to kill somebody by strangling or similar means in order to sell the body for dissection to a surgeon or anatomist, as did Mr. Burke of the infamous team of Burke and Hare in the early 1800s.
bushel—A measurement of volume equal to four pecks or eight gallons.
bustard—The largest bird ever found in England, it resembled a turkey and is now extinct there.
bustle—The dress style they couldn’t kill. Dresses in the 1850s and 1860s were so voluminous that the dress spread out on all sides of the woman wearing it. It was cut back, therefore—in front. The extrusion remaining behind was the bustle, which disappeared in the 1870s and then returned in the 1880s.
butler—The servant in charge of the wines (the name comes from the French bouteille for “bottle”) and of officiating at dinner. He also looked after the family “plate” (silverware), sometimes sleeping in a room next to the safe in which it was locked at night. In the absence of a steward, he was the senior member of the male household staff, with power to fire the footmen. He also sometimes warmed and ironed the newspapers before the master’s breakfast.
butterfly kiss—One brushes one’s eyelashes along somebody’s cheek. “Celia, dear, come and kiss me,” says Dorothea Brooke as her sister is about to go to bed in Middlemarch, whereupon, we are told, “Celia knelt down to get the right level and gave her little butterfly kiss, while Dorothea encircled her with gentle arms and pressed her lips gravely on each cheek in turn.”
cab—The term was a contraction of cabriolet, the name of a light two-wheel carriage introduced into England from France at the end of the 1820s. There were already hackney (for hire) coaches operating as cabs on the streets of London. Cabriolets displaced many of them and were, in turn, superseded by the hansom.
cabinet—The core group of some fifteen or so ministers within a government. Headed by the prime minister, the cabinet was composed generally of the lord chancellor, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the home secretary, the foreign secretary, and the first lord of the admiralty, along, often, with the lord privy seal, the postmaster general, and others. It was thus made up on the one hand of executive department heads such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the secretaries of state and on the other hand of people such as the lord privy seal who had only nominal official responsibilities but gave advice or assisted in keeping the affairs of the majority party running smoothly.
cabinet piano—A kind of upright piano made in the early 1800s that was about five and a half feet high.
cabriolet—See cab. The derivation of the word—possibly of interest to those who have taken taxi cabs in large American cities—is from the French for leap, which comes in turn from the word for a he-goat.
cad—A term used in the mid-1800s to refer to an omnibus conductor in London.
cadet—The younger or youngest son or
branch of a family.
calash—A large hooded hat for women that could be folded back, so named from the similar hood on a French carriage of the era.
Calendar—See Newgate Calendar.
calfskin—In the early 1800s books in England were generally bound in calfskin, although the “calf” could well turn out to be a goat. The narrator of Wuthering Heights dozes off in reading and, on awaking, “discovered my candle wick reclining on one of the antique volumes and perfuming the place with an odor of roasted calf-skin.”
calico—A cotton cloth first imported from Calicut in India, hence the name. Originally a colored cloth in England and then white.
called to the bar—Authorized to practice law as a barrister. This occurred when the benchers in one of the Inns of Court called the eligible law students to the barrier or “bar” which separated the two groups. It did not refer to the bar in a court of law (as in the “prisoner at the bar”).
calomel—A tasteless, gray medicine, sometimes powdered, that was made of mercury and chlorine.
cambric—A type of linen cloth, quite fine, or an imitation of it. Often popping up in handkerchief form as an emblem of gentility.
Camdentown—A part of London, slightly north of the City, where Bob Cratchit lived in a four-room house with his six children on about thirty-seven pounds a year, so Dickens says in A Christmas Carol. In 1822, Dickens’s father, John, an impecunious clerk in the naval pay office, moved into a four-room house with basement and garret at No. 16 Bayham Street, Camdentown (rent, twenty-two pounds a year).
camel leopard—A giraffe.
cameo—The opposite of intaglio. A precious stone is cut so that a head or other figure is raised on it in relief.
camisole—A kind of woman’s undershirt worn between the dress and the corset to protect the former from the latter.
canals—England had a good many canals, some 3,000 miles’ worth in the 1820s, because in the early 1800s it was realized that horses could pull a great deal more along a body of water than they could on their backs or behind them on a road. Built by the workers called “navvies,” most canals were in the north and the Midlands and were for freight rather than passengers.
candles—How, we wonder, did they avoid fires? They didn’t. In the period from 1833 to 1849, out of some 660 fires a year in London, about 170 were caused by accidents with candles, a cause far in excess of any other.
Candlemas—A church festival held on February 2 which celebrates the purification of the Virgin Mary and the presentation of Jesus in the Temple.
canons—Members of the chapter attached to a cathedral who assisted the dean in running the physical plant and conducting the services. Minor canons, who helped with the choir, were not members of the chapter.
captain—In the army a captain commanded a company if he were in the infantry; if he were in the cavalry, a captain commanded a troop. He ranked above a lieutenant, below a major. In the navy a captain was a man in charge of a warship and ranked under a rear admiral or commodore, and above a commander. In the early part of the century, real captains were called post-captains to distinguish them from officers like commanders who might be given a temporary captaincy of a vessel.
caravansery—A fancy word for an inn.
carking—Having the ability to worry someone or make them careworn.
carman—The driver of a cart or waggon or a carrier.
carpetbag—A bag for traveling that was usually made out of a carpet.
carriage—Generally, a generic term for a vehicle that carried people rather than goods, with the additional connotation of a vehicle used by the well-to-do. A pony cart, for example, would probably not have been called a carriage; a barouche or a victoria would have.
carrier—The carrier and his cart or van were the usual way of getting from one place to another in rural areas. He carried goods and people, usually on a regular route. Barkis in David Copperfield is a carrier.
A Phaeton.
carter—The driver of a cart or waggon, including a farm waggon.
casement—A window hinged on the side.
cashiered—To be discharged from the army in disgrace, usually after a court-martial. Officers who had been simply dismissed from the army could be reinstated; officers who had been cashiered could not. It was a particularly heavy blow before the purchase of commissions was abolished in 1871 because it meant the man cashiered could not sell his commission to someone else, as was normal practice upon leaving the army.
casino (or cassino)—A card game for two to four people. The idea is to take whatever card is face up by matching it at once, e.g., taking a 4 with a 4, or by building on it, e.g., putting down a 3 on the 4, and then matching the combination in the next round, taking the 4 with the 3 atop it with a 7.
cassock—A long garment worn by Church of England clergy under the surplice.
castors—Little dinner-table things like salt and pepper shakers and cruets. Castor is also Latin for “beaver”; the term was sometimes applied to hats made from the animal.
catarrh—The head, nose, and throat fill up with mucus due to an inflammation. Basically like a cold or mild flu.
catch—A round for three or more singers, often humorous, in which each player had to “catch” the melody as it came turn for him to sing it. “Three Blind Mice” is a catch.
catechism—The questions and answers about the Church of England set forth in the Book of Common Prayer that were to be mastered by a child before he or she could be confirmed.
cathedral—Cathedra is the Latin word for the throne in which a bishop sat. The church accommodating this throne—and hence, usually, the main church in the diocese—was the cathedral.
Catholic question—Should Catholics be allowed to hold public office? This was a question which became prominent in English politics after the union of England and Ireland occurred in 1801. The Tories by and large fought Catholic office-holding and then the duke of Wellington—Tory prime minster—turned around and engineered the passage of the acts in 1828 that permitted it.
caul—A membrane covering a child’s head at birth, which could be purchased to bring good luck. It was supposed to be especially good at preventing drowning. “I was born with a caul,” David Copperfield tells us, “which was advertised for sale, in the newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas. Whether sea-going people were short of money about that time, or were short of faith and preferred cork jackets, I don’t know; all I know is, that there was but one solitary bidding.” “And I was born wi’ a caul,” says Christian in The Return of the Native, “and perhaps can be no more ruined than drowned?”
causeway—A highway raised up to prevent water from getting on it or sometimes merely a paved highway.
cellaret—A cabinet for storing liquor.
certificate—One needed to get a certificate after 1846 if one wanted to teach in a national school. (Normally, one did this by attending a training college, as Sue Bridehead does in Jude the Obscure.)
chaffinch—A pert little songbird, favored as a pet, and deriving his name from the fact that he frequented barns, pecking up the loose chaff.
chaise—A hard term to pin down the precise meaning of, but it seems to have been used to refer generally to a two- to four-wheel vehicle that carried a maximum of two and had a top, if any, that was convertible.
chaise cart—A kind of small cart that could be used for driving.
chamber—In a dwelling, it was a private room, generally a bedroom, as opposed to the public rooms like the dining room or drawing room. In a place like the Inns of Court, “chambers” in the plural referred to a barrister’s office, which sometimes doubled as his living quarters.
chambermaid—A woman who cleaned the rooms in a hotel or inn.
chancel—The portion of a church extending east beyond the nave, where the choir sat and where the altar was.
chancellor—Chancellor was a title that designated various dignitaries. It generally referred to the various lesser judges of
the Courts of Chancery or the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the lord chancellor himself. It also referred to a church official subordinate to the dean of a cathedral chapter and, in addition, to the ecclesiastical judge who presided over the consistory (diocesan) court. Finally, just to confuse matters, the titular heads of Oxford and Cambridge were called chancellors.
Chancellor of the Exchequer—The highest post in an administration after that of prime minister. The Chancellor of the Exchequer ran the Treasury Department and prepared the budget.
Chancery—The court of equity law, which sat generally in Westminster Hall, the lord chancellor being its chief judge, assisted by various subordinate chancellors and a master of the rolls. Dickens, who had some unhappy experiences with suits there arising from people plagiarizing A Christmas Carol, skewers chancery in Bleak House. It was merged with the common law courts in 1873 after numerous, not very successful, attempts to reform it. Ironically, the Chancery Court had started out centuries before as a court through which people who could not get justice in the ordinary common law system might find a remedy that favored justice over mindless legalism.
chandler—Originally, a man who dealt in candles. Later, the corner grocer in poor neighborhoods.
’Change—Short for the Royal Exchange.
chantry—A side chapel or area set aside in churches for the chanting of a mass for the repose of someone’s soul (usually that of the donor) in pre-Reformation days. Some of them remained, their original use forsaken, in the Church of England churches after they were taken over from the Catholic church.
chapel—A term in the 1800s that usually meant a Dissenting or nonconformist place of worship, since a Church of England building for worship was either a cathedral or a church, except that (1) a private house sometimes had a chapel attached to it; and (2) in especially large parishes a so-called chapel of ease was sometimes built to serve parishioners in the regions of the area more remote from the parish church. Gimmerton Kirk, in the graveyard of which Heathcliff and Catherine are laid to rest, is apparently a chapel of ease.
chaperone—The servant, mother, or married female family friend who supervised eligible young girls in public. At dances the chaperone sat in the corner and made sure her charge did not do anything “improper,” and the chaperone was in charge of making introductions to strange young men.