great man's announcements are notorious; as much so, in fact, as is the diction of the great London newspaper which claims 'the largest circulation in the world.' From such circumstances we get words like barnumese and telegraphese, to signify exaggeration of style—what in slang parlance is known as the 'putting on of side.'
Verb.—To Barnumize is to talk or assert oneself in the style popularly attributed to Barnum.
Baronet, subs. (old).—A humorous
variation for sirloin [of beef].
1749. Fielding, Tom Jones, bk. IV., ch. x. The sight of the roast beef struck him dumb, permitting him only to say grace, and to declare he must pay his respects to the baronet, for so he called the sirloin.
Barrack-Hack, subs. (familiar).—1.
In an inoffensive sense
applied to young women who
attend garrison balls year after
year. So used there is no
such imputation of lax morals
as occurs in sense 2.
2. A soldier's prostitute. There are but few classes of persons to whom a greater number of slang epithets have been applied than to the poor wretched creatures, who from choice, bad-treatment, or as a means of subsistence abandon themselves to a life of prostitution. These names are to be found in plenty for all grades of semi-public or public women. They run the gauntlet from the gilded courtezan to the veriest drab in the last stages of destitution and disease. The list of synonyms is both long and grim; the names in many cases speaking volumes on a subject which it would be painful as well as needless to pursue farther in this place, inasmuch as the epithets both in French and English, and, it must be added, those of other languages as well, speak with a brutal cynicism to which it would be out of place to add a comment.
English Synonyms. Ladies of accommodating morals; ladies of more complaisance than virtue; anonyma; pretty horse-*breaker; artichoke; columbine; common Jack; convenient; cow; crack; aunt; ladies of easy virtue; bangster; blowen; garrison-hack; bat; bawdy-basket; bed-fagot; fireship; bit o' muslin; laced mutton; mot; bobtail; bona roba; brevet wife; grass widow; brimstone; black Bess; brown Bessy; bulker; bunter; burick; buttock; cab moll; cat; chauvering donna; chauvering moll; barber's chair; demi-rep; tartlet; trollop; shake; poll; dolly-mop; gay woman; unfortunate; dress-lodger; mauks; quædam (obsolete); woman; bitch; perfect lady; public ledger; necessary; warming-pan; nun.
French Synonyms. Une persilleuse (familiar); une mal peignée (popular: 'a dirty ill-dressed woman; drab; or draggletail'); une moellonneuse (a prostitute who frequents builders' yards); hirondelle de goguenot (military: 'a barrack-hack'; in French soldiers' slang un goguenot is a tin can used for making coffee or soup); un chausson (literally 'a sock' or 'stocking'); almanach de trente six mille
