by Daniel Pool
Fleet Prison—A fleet was a small brook. Originally, there was one running down to the Thames where Fleet Street now is. Fleet Prison was a prison housing debtors that was emptied in 1844 and thereafter pulled down.
flip—One of those hearty old English drinks. This one consisted of beer plus some stronger alcohol mixed with sugar and then energized by having a red-hot iron stuck in the middle of it.
flitches—The side of a pig or bacon, which could be hung in chimneys to cure.
flock—Bits of cloth, wool, and the like used for stuffing mattresses and furniture. In The Mill on the Floss obviously not a preferred material since when the relatives all gather to discuss Mr. Tulliver’s financial downfall, Mrs. Glegg harshly tells her sister, “You must bring your mind to your circumstances, Bessy, and not be thinking o’ silver and chany, but whether you shall get so much as a flock bed to lie on.”
florin—A silver coin worth two shillings, introduced in 1849.
flounce—A good way to leave a room in a huff, and also a piece of material on a woman’s dress that flapped loose after being sewn on at the top.
fly—A horse and carriage that was rented, usually by the day.
fob—A watch fob was a little pocket in the pants in which to keep a watch. When David Copperfield first meets his great-aunt Betsey Trotwood’s friend Mr. Dick, the latter “had his watch in his fob, and his money in his pockets.”
folio—A piece of paper that has been folded only once, thus producing two large pages. (As opposed to quarto and octavo.) Books were frequently described by their size according to this system of classification.
follower—A would-be boyfriend of a female servant. They were almost always forbidden by employers.
font—The little basin raised on a pedestal used in a church for baptisms.
foolscap—A kind of paper, generally about thirteen by seventeen inches in dimensions, some varieties of which at one time bore a watermark of a fool’s cap and bells.
footboard—A board that footmen stood on when riding at the rear of a carriage. Also a board to step on when one got into a carriage, or a board for the driver or coachman to rest his feet on while driving.
Foot Guards—The infantry regiments that stood guard over the sovereign, e.g., at Buckingham Palace. They consisted of the Coldstream Guards, the Scots Guards and the Grenadier Guards and took precedence over all other infantry regiments in the army.
footman—The indoor male servant subordinate to the butler and superior in rank to the boy or page. Typically he cleaned and trimmed the lamps, waited at table at fancy dinner parties and went out with the ladies of the house when they went to pay calls, where it was his job to dash up the steps with a calling card and inquire if anyone was at home while his mistress waited in the carriage. He often wore an old-fashioned livery consisting of knee breeches and silk stockings; footmen were accordingly evaluated quite seriously by the appearance of their calves. If one had more than one footman, one was supposed to make sure they matched in height.
forfeits—A game in which one gave up some small possession after breaking a silly rule and then had to do something that made one look ridiculous to get it back.
form—A wooden bench, such as was typically found in schoolrooms.
four-in-hand—The driving of a carriage pulled by four horses. It became a nostalgic leisure-time activity for the affluent, especially in the later 1800s, after such carriages died out to a great extent as a practical means of transport.
fox’s brush—See brush.
frank—Until 1840, a member of Parliament could send letters free. This was a worthwhile perquisite before cheap postal rates went into effect that year.
freehold—Basically, out-and-out ownership of land, equivalent to fee simple, as opposed to copyhold and leasehold. Freeholders were the landowners in a community, as opposed to the renters. Before the Reform Act of 1832 the vote was restricted to freeholders whose land yielded them an annual income of forty shillings or more.
freeman—The name sometimes given to those in a borough who had the privileges of borough citizenship such as the right to elect members of the council.
frieze—A coarse-textured wool cloth.
frigate—One of the smaller boats in the old British navy, being of the fifth or sixth rate. Unlike ships of the line, they were used for reconnaissance or for protecting merchant ships. They carried between twenty and forty-four guns.
frock—The standard term for a woman’s ordinary or fancy dress until well into the century and applied particularly to dresses made of muslin and other light materials. A frock generally buttoned up the back. Little children had to wear them sometimes, too.
frock coat—A men’s daytime coat that became the standard everyday wear for the latter part of the century, by which time it was invariably black. It fell roughly to the knees and was of an even length all around.
front—A small, phony hairpiece worn above the forehead by women.
fruiterer—A fruit seller.
frumenty—A dish made of boiled milk, wheat and seasonings like cinnamon or sugar. It appears at the beginning of The Mayor of Casterbridge under the name of “furmity,” the dish of “corn in the grain, flour, milk, raisins, currants and what-not” purveyed by the old lady who keeps spiking Henchard’s helpings until he sells his wife.
funds—The national debt was sometimes referred to as the “funds,” because the government made payments to reduce it out of a whole series of different funds. When the government issued securities against the debt for purchase by small investors, the securities, too, were called the “funds.”
furlong—A length equal to 660 feet. That was the average length of a furrow in old farm fields—the word means a “furrow long.”
furze—A yellow-flowered, prickly, evergreen shrub growing in desolate areas, also called “whin” or “gorse.”
fusiliers—Originally, infantry soldiers armed with fusils. However, as time passed, regiments called “fusiliers” came to be no different from others except that they wore busbies.
fustian—The name for a number of coarse cotton fabrics such as velveteen, corduroy, etc., usually of some darkish color.
gaffer—An old man or a man of high position. In Far from the Madding Crowd someone speaks of “a great gaffer like the Lord.”
gaiters—Knee-length leggings buttoning up the side that were worn in the country to protect clothes from dirt, mud, and rain. (Shorter ones were called spatterdashes—or spats—because they “dashed away” spatters.)
gallery—The gallery was a raised area at the back of the parish church where, often, the choir sang. In a great country house, it was a long room or hallway generally used to display ancestral portraits. In origin, country-house galleries were simply indoor walking areas for use in inclement weather.
galop—An energetic dance that was later incorporated into the quadrille.
game—Animals that one hunted or shot at for sport, such as pheasant, grouse, hare, partridge, etc.
gaming—Gambling. Nothing to do with the word “game” in the sense of hunted animals.
gamekeeper—The man hired on great estates to breed pheasant or other game for shooting, to trap vermin, to keep poachers off the property, and to take the proprietor and his friends out after game when they journeyed up from London for some days of “shooting.”
gammon—An expression meaning “nonsense.”
gangway—The gangway was the passageway about halfway down the House of Commons that connected the rear and the front benches. “Above the gangway,” i.e., closer to the Speaker, sat the members of the incumbent ministry plus their strong adherents.
gardener—The head gardener on a large estate was generally considered one of the “upper servants” and as such entitled to eat with the steward or the butler when these worthies dined separately from the lower domestic staff.
garret—Basically, an attic.
garner—To store things like corn in a granary.
gar
ter—The Order of the, Garter was the highest order of knighthood; its members outranked baronets. It was an honor generally bestowed only on peers. Supposedly, it originated when the countess of Salisbury let slip a garter at a ball and the king picked it up, saying meaningfully, “Honi soit qui mal y pense.” Being a Knight of the Garter entitled you to put “K.G.” after your name and to wear a fancy star on your chest, a garter, a mantle, and so on.
gas—Gas lights were adjustable. When a room was not in use or the family were out for the evening, the gas lights could be turned down without wholly extinguishing them so as to save money. Gas lighting came in in the early 1800s for streets but was not really suitable for use in homes til late in the century.
gate—To gate an undergraduate at a university was to punish him by confining him within the grounds of his college.
Gazette—A publication whose full name was the London Gazette, which came out twice a week and listed government appointments and also bankrupts. “To be gazetted” meant to be appointed to a post somewhere. “To be in the gazette” meant that you were a bankrupt.
general elections—Elections at which all members of the House of Commons had to stand for election, as opposed to by-elections, which were only for one or a few seats, as when someone had died.
general post—The mail that went out of the central London post office to the hinterlands of England. As opposed to the “penny” or “two-penny” local mail within London or other large cities, which was organized and run separately.
gentleman farmer—A term that was used to characterize people who formerly might have called themselves yeomen. The gentleman farmer farmed a fairly sizable amount of land but less than that farmed by the gentry and came below the gentry socially. Some gentlemen farmers farmed their own land; others were tenant farmers on great estates. Typically they employed laborers but, unlike a squire, would have no farm tenants of their own. Farmer Boldwood in Far from the Madding Crowd is a gentleman farmer; in The Mill on the Floss George Eliot tells us that Mr. Glegg belongs to this group also.
gentleman’s gentleman—A valet.
gentry—The gentry were the landowners in the country who came just below the nobility in social rank and the amount of land they owned. Their upper reaches consisted of baronets, like Sir James Chettam of Middlemarch or Sir Pitt Crawley in Vanity Fair, and knights. In the lower reaches of the gentry came the “squires” like Squire Cass in Silas Marner or other nontitled folk, who typically had deep family roots in the area and rented out their land to tenant farmers. Unlike the gentlemen farmers or yeomen just below them, the gentry took no part in the actual work of farming themselves. Typically, the gentry were active locally, as justices of the peace, for example, while the great landowners just above them who were members of the peerage spent a good portion of each year in London. Jane Austen draws her main characters almost exclusively from among the gentry.
gibbet—As opposed to a straight hanging, the gibbet involved having one’s corpse hung in chains after one died, preferably high off the ground at a crossroads where one could serve as a ghastly deterrent to passersby.
gift—For a living or benefice to be “in” someone’s “gift” meant that the giver had the power to say upon whom it should be bestowed.
gig—A one-horse carriage, light, with only two wheels, that became fashionable in the early 1800s as a modest all-purpose country cart, sort of the Model T Ford of its day. Preferred except by the unusually dashing or wealthy to the two-horse curricle, which cost more to maintain.
gill—A quarter of a pint.
gillyflower—A name designating flowers that smelled of clove, they being the wallflower, the stock, and the carnation.
gin—A trap or a snare.
gingham—A strong material made of checked cotton or linen and sometimes used in clothing.
girandole—A candlestick with different branches that was sometimes freestanding and sometimes came out of a wall.
Gladstone—The most famous Liberal prime minister. Known for his antagonism to Disraeli. His name was given to a small traveling bag.
glazier—A man who installed windows.
gleaners—The people who went through a field after the crop had been officially harvested and picked up or gleaned the bits of wheat or barley that the harvesters had missed. The advent of mechanical reapers, much more efficient than the human kind at harvesting every last little bit, largely killed the practice.
glebe—Sounds like a small Arctic bird. Actually, it meant the land attached to a benefice from which the incumbent was entitled to receive the rents. Jane Austen’s clergyman father used his to raise food to feed his eight children.
glee—In music, the glee was a vocal piece for three people or more. In Jane Eyre, singers gather around the piano while Jane and her pupil listen: “The solo over, a duet followed, and then a glee.”
glen—A low area in between two hills or mountains, sometimes acting as a streambed.
gloaming—Twilight.
globes—Frequently mentioned in a pedagogical context. They consisted of a globe of the earth and a globe of the heavens and were used to teach geography and astronomy.
glowworm—A type of worm. The male has wings but no lights and the female lights but no wings. According to what Hardy says in The Return of the Native, on some nights “it is possible to read the handwriting of a letter by the light of two or three.” Wildeve and Diggory Venn dice nocturnally for Mrs. Yeobright’s guineas by the light of glowworms trapped by the former.
godparent—Someone who promised at a christening that the child would receive a proper religious education and forswore the devil on its behalf so that it could be provisionally made a member of the Church of England.
gooseberry—The berry of a thorny shrub that was edible and could be mixed with cream to make “gooseberry fool.” Not to be confused with “playing old gooseberry” with a thing or person, which was to make a mess of it or of their affairs.
Gorm—Lower-class slang for “goddamn.”
gorse—See furze.
gout—A hereditary disease aggravated by the consumption of too much protein (meat or wine in the 1800s) and resulting in painful swelling of the joints, especially the toes. Sometimes treated as a mild status symbol by the well-to-do since it connoted the financial wherewithal to live high on the hog.
grammar school—Originally schools of this type taught only Greek and Latin language and grammar, hence the name. Most of the great public schools like Harrow and Eton and Rugby were originally grammar schools and then expanded their curriculum in the 1800s and began admitting children from around the nation instead of just their immediate locality.
grange—An isolated farmhouse, usually belonging to a member of the gentry, such as Mr. Linton (Thrushcross Grange) in Wuthering Heights or Mr. Brooke (Tipton Grange) in Middlemarch. Originally granges were grain storehouses, often attached to monasteries.
grate—The coal used in English fireplaces needed air underneath to burn. Consequently, fireplaces were built with little iron latticeworks of bars in them to hold the coal, frequently with a raised area or hob on the side where kettles and other things could be set to warm. This whole apparatus was the grate. Cleaning the grate was a chore; in fancy households the housemaid or maid-of-all-work cleaned out the grate and laid a new fire each morning and, later, polished the grate with blacklead.
gravel walk—Gravel was evidently the preferred substance for alleys and walkways and driveways in country estates.
Gray’s Inn—See Inns of Court.
greatcoat—A big overcoat worn out of doors, frequently with several short collars known as capes around the shoulders. Sometimes the term was also used for a pelisse.
great seal—The great seal was the official seal of the realm affixed to major state documents such as declarations of war, and it was in the keeping of the lord chancellor. Actually, it consisted of two halves of a die into which—when they were fitted together—wax could be poured to produce an
impression that would then be fixed to the relevant document.
greengage—A green-colored plum.
greengrocer—A man who sold fruits and vegetables.
The Great Seal.
Greenwich—A town several miles downriver from London on the south side of the Thames, perhaps most notable in the 1800s for housing the Royal Naval Hospital for old sailors.
grenadier—Originally, grenadiers were the men in the army who threw grenades. Because of their task they were supposed to be bigger and stronger than everyone else. After it stopped being necessary to lob grenades the tradition was still maintained that the grenadiers should be quite large. The formidable, if pompous, Miss Pinkerton of Miss Pinkerton’s Academy, Thackeray tells us in Vanity Fair, “was as tall as a grenadier.”
Gretna Green—The place in Scotland to which young would-be marrieds eloped, typically when parental consent seemed unlikely and one party was underage. Just across the border from England, one could be married with no waiting period by simply declaring one’s desire to do so in the presence of a competent adult—no license or clergyman required. In 1856, however, the requirement of a twenty-one-day residence in Scotland was imposed.
groat—A nickname for the fourpence.
grog—A drink of watered-down rum. Admiral “Old Grog” Vernon, horrified at the amount of alcohol his men were consuming, ordered, circa 1745, that his crews’ drinks, traditionally straight rum until then, be cut with water. His nickname, derived from the cloak of grogram he wore, was given to the new, diluted beverage.
groom—The servant in a household who looked after the horses.
groomsmen—The equivalent of the best men and ushers at today’s weddings. (Literally, the male analogues of the bride’s maids.) If there were only one groomsman, he was the best man.
Grosvenor Square—A part of Mayfair that an 1871 guidebook no doubt truthfully called the most fashionable square in London.
ground floor—The term customarily used by the English to denote the floor entered at street level. What Americans call the “first” floor.