The first-edition volume – ‘A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew’ - was explicitly marketed as a practical guide for “foreigners” and other newcomers, promising help to “secure their Money and preserve their Lives.” In other words, it wasn’t just a curiosity: it was early modern London’s rough-and-ready survival manual writes Project Gutenberg.
- How Did it All Begin? The Rich Origins of the English Language
- 14 Old Swear Words That Should Totally Make a Comeback
Pages in the New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew…, from 1699. (Dominic Winter Auctioneers of Cirencester)
A “Dictionary of Slang” Before Slang Dictionaries Were a Thing
The Times reports the dictionary contains around 4,000 entries and was compiled to help visitors avoid being targeted by London’s criminal “canting crew” - a catch-all phrase for vagrants, thieves, cheats, and other street operators who used insider jargon to communicate.
That purpose of the book hints at the city’s social reality: London was expanding, crowded, and increasingly commercial, with plenty of strangers arriving who didn’t know the local dangers. It is exactly the sort of urban pressure-cooker that can generate both crime and the language that helps criminals coordinate it.
What survives today is the dictionary’s strange double-life: it’s a tool of protection and a work of entertainment. Even a quick glance at definitions shows how it turned daily life - drink, gambling, sex work, money - into a compact code that was easy to speak and hard to decode, explains Project Gutenberg.
- The Gruesome Story of Tyburn Tree, London’s Infamous Gallows
- Medieval Murder Maps Reveal Violence in 14th-century English Cities
London taverns were natural habitats for slang, scams, and streetwise talk. (Public domain)
Decoding “Fuddlecups” and “Cackling-Farts”
Among the terms highlighted in modern coverage are “muck” for money, “fat cull” for a rich man, “catch-fart” for a footboy, and “adam-tiler” for a pickpocket’s associate. Seen together, they sketch a street economy where servants, gamblers, and thieves all moved through the same public spaces, and where a few words could flag a target, a lookout, or a quick escape, describes the Daily Mail.
The Times piece adds that “baubels” meant jewels and notes the dictionary’s influence on later slang compilations, before it was eventually superseded by Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in the late 18th century.
If all this sounds oddly modern, that’s because slang has always done two jobs at once: it creates belonging (you’re either “in” or you’re not) and it disguises meaning from outsiders. Even today, the fastest-evolving slang tends to bubble up where identities are contested and surveillance is common, whether that’s a street corner, a workplace, or an online community.
From Auction Block to Cultural Time Capsule
The dictionary’s reappearance isn’t happening in a library display case—it’s heading into the collectors’ market. The book is being sold by Dominic Winter Auctioneers in England as a rare first edition and framed as “the first comprehensive dictionary of slang,” valued for how it shaped later collections and for what it reveals about England’s “low life and underworld.”
That makes sense: in a city where fortunes were made and lost quickly, language itself became a kind of technology - cheap, portable, and powerful. And three centuries later, it still works: even if you’ve never eaten a “cackling-fart” or met a “fuddlecup,” you can hear the city’s noise in the word.
Top image: Engraving titled 'Scene in a London Street on a Sunday Morning', depicting a crowd standing in front of a public house. Published in The Illustrated London News on 6 December 1856. Source: The Illustrated London News/ CC BY 4.0
By Gary Manners
References
Gent, B. E., 1699. A new dictionary of the terms ancient and modern of the canting crew. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75897
Bes, S., Revealed: The hilarious slang used in London 300 years ago – so, do YOU know your 'fuddle cups' from your 'cackling farts'? Daily Mail. Available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-15491285/hilarious-slang-london-300-years-ago.html
The Times. Are you a fat cull or fuddlecap? Consult the old book of London slang. Available at: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/history/article/dictionary-slang-17th-century-london-underworld-t7gzlb9cq
