verjuice _ The sour juice of green or unripe grapes, crab apples, or other fruit, especially when made into an acidic liquor. This liquor was once much used in cooking, as a condiment, and for medicinal purposes.
– A Sea of Words : A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O’Brian’s Seafaring Tales
TACKLE, … a machine formed by the communication of a rope with an assemblage of blocks, and known in mechanics by the name of pulley.
Tackles are used in a ship to raise, remove, or secure weighty bodies; to support the masts; or to extend the sails and rigging.
TAIL-BLOCK, a small single block, having a short piece of rope attached to it, by which it may be fastened to any object at pleasure; either for convenience, or to increase the force applied to the said object, as explained in the first part of the article tackle.
– Wm. Falconer’s Dictionary of the Marine (1780).
Cat Wagons. These were mobile bordellos that traveled to mining towns, construction jobs and groups of cowboys on the range. A madam would load up her girls and take them to a site where they would ply their trade.
– Prostitute Dictionary of the Old West
simoleon American slang, since c. 1830 A dollar. [ < British slang (since XVII but obsolete by late XIX) simon, a sixpence. There is no explanation of the British usage. Simon Magus sought to buy sacramental powers for money, and simony, named after him, is the sin of selling the services of the church for money. The money nexus is apparent, but no proper priest will sell out his office for a mere sixpence. Nor is there an explanation of the American variation. What is certain is that British simon passed into American simoleon, the monetary exchange rate shifting from British 6 p. to American $1.]
– Dictionary & Native’s Guide to the Unknown American Language
This week, a double gift for Christmas!
HORSE … a thick rope, extended in a perpendicular direction near the fore or after-side of a mast, for the purpose of hoisting or extending some sail thereon. When it is fixed before a mast, it is calculated for the use of a sail called the square-sail … When the horse is placed abaft or behind a mast, it is intended for the try-sail of a snow, and is accordingly very rarely fixed in this position, except in those sloops of war which occasionally assume the form of snows, in order to deceive the enemy.
SNOW, (senau, Fr.) is generally the largest of all two-masted vessels employed by Europeans, and the most convenient for navigation … When the sloops of war are rigged as snows, they are furnished with a horse, which answers the purpose of the try-sail-mast, the fore-part of the sail being attached by rings to the said horse, in different parts of its heighth.
– Wm. Falconer’s Dictionary of the Marine (1780).
HEIFER BRAND _ A handkerchief on a man’s arm at a dance, signifying that he’s prepared to take the role of a woman and accept male dancing partners.
– Dictionary of the American West by Winfred Blevins.
demonocracy. Government by demons. Greek daimon, a ministering spirit; kratos, rule … There is also the form demonarchy (Greek arche, rule), which seems a better word to employ than demonocracy, lest one elide a syllable.
– Dictionary of Early English by the ever-witty Joseph T. Shipley (1955).
JACKET _ To cover a bum (motherless) lamb with the skin of a dead lamb. Going by smell, the mother of the dead lamb will then nurse the bum lamb.
– Dictionary of the American West by Winfred Blevins.
There is a bird called the YBIS (Ibis) which cleans out its bowels with its own beak. It enjoys eating corpses or snakes’ eggs, and from such things it takes food home for its young, which comes most acceptable. It walks about near the seashore by day and night, looking for little dead fish or other bodies which have been thrown up by the waves. It is afraid to enter the water because it cannot swim.
– The Book of Beasts : Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century Made and Edited by T. H. White (1954).
glebe. The soil; cultivated land; especially, land assigned to a clergyman as part of his benefice… Gleby soil … is rich, fertile soil.
– Dictionary of Early English by Joseph T. Shipley (1955).
