Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also dunghill-cock) a coward; also attrib.; cite 1818 = cowardice.

1575-83		‘Bashe Libel’ in May & Bryson Verse Libel 78: This scabbed squyre, this dunghill knight.
1605		Shakespeare King Lear IV vi: Out, dunghill!
1627		G. Peele Merrie Conceited Jests 13: You Dunghill, quoth George, doe you out-face me?
1732		Ladies Delight 28: The Dunghill Trapes, trickt up like virtuous Trull.
1746		W. Dunkin Parson’s Revels (2010) 62: For Spurs [...] / Were made for Birds of mettle Keen, / And not for Dunghill-Cocks.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: dunghill a coward, a cockpit phrase, all but game cocks being stiled dunghills.
1795		Sporting Mag. Apr. VI 58/1: Though you crow, / And reckon dunghills those that cannot show / Feathers as fine as yours.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1816		W.T. Moncrieff All at Coventry II ii: I was mistaken in my bird, I see, – a shy cock, right dunghill.
1818		Observer 11 Oct. 2: This †mushroom of fashion, whenever he came, / Seem’d to me to display much more dunghill than game † This vegetable, from generally springing up where refuse has been thrown [...] implies an upstart.
1824		Pierce Egan’s Life in London 19 Sept. 269/1: [I]t being the opinion that he was a dunghill bird.
1827		W. Clarke Every Night Book 73: One drop of dunghill blood in his heart will curdle the whole current with cold fear.
1838		Examiner 19 Aug. 11/1: Dunghill demagogue — foul example — potatoe plebian face.
1850		E.V. Kenealy Goethe: a New Pantomime 189: Dunghill, coward, dunce, rascallion!
1852		Bell’s Life in Sydney 13 Mar. 2/7: Come show me if you’re dunghill or game cock-a-doodle-doo.
[1861		Newcastl Jrnl 7 Oct. 3/3: Never, under any circumstances, make a friend of a coward; his heart is a dunghill while suspicion is the cock that ever crows upon it].
1870		Aus. Town & Country Jrnl (Sydney) 26 Nov. 17/1: ‘The big dunghill is wheeling again.’ ‘Give it to him!’ ‘Pitch into him!’.

2. used as a non-specific insult.

1842

Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 30 July n.p.: They must not take more credit than what is due to them, or crack themselves up for fighting men when they are nothing but mere dung hills.