buttock-ball, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

buttock-ball n.

[buttock n. + SE ball; the ‘Buttock Ball in St Giles’, held weekly and described by Ned Ward, A Compleat and Humorous Account of All the Remarkable Clubs and Societies (1709) as ‘this School of Venus’ and a ‘Diabolical Academy’, is attended by ‘a mottl’d Diversity of Rakes, Beaus, grave Hypocrites, and Apprentices; Pimps, Bullies, Stallions, Valets, Butlers, and disguis’d Livery-Men; Thieves, Gamesters, Sweetners, Town Traps and Highwaymen; Procurers, Punks, Cooks, Jades and Chambermaids; damn’d filing Whores, sill Sows and Fireships; lewd Widows, wicked Wives and whorish Daughters; these Larded, by Chance, with here and there, a maid, but the fewest of that Sport of any.’ Ward suggests that the first such dance was held ‘by the Cole-Yard Gateway into Drury-Lane’, then a centre of prostitution, c.1670]

1. a dance at which the chief aim is to find sexual partners, the 18C equivalent of a meat market n. (1)

1687		T. Brown Liberty of Conscience in Duke Buckingham’s Works (1705) II 131: Why not into a Bibbing-house, as well as a Dancing School, a buttoc-ball, or the like [F&H].
1698		N. Ward London Spy II 42: We were now tumbled into Company compos’d of as many sorts of Rakes as you may see Whores at a Buttock Ball.
1709		N. Ward A Compleat and Humorous Account of all the Remarkable Clubs (1756) 75: Then, like Whores at a Buttock-Ball, they begin to vie Honestly one with another. [Ibid.] 163: The Weekly dancing Club: OR, buttock-ball in St. Giles [which] consisted cheifly [sic] of Bullies, Libertines, and Strumpets’. [Ibid.] 171: This Buttock-Ball, or Diabolical Academy, where all Manner of Vice was promiscuously Taught at a small Expence, [...] was begun, above thirty Years since, by a half-bred Dancing-Master, over the Cole-Yard Gateway into Drury-Lane; a Place so conveniently seated among Punks and Fidlers, that the Mungrel Undertaker was always sure of Musick, and equally certain of a Crowd of Whores to Dance to it.
1728		J. Dennis Letter VI Remarks on Mr Pope’s Rape of the Lock 45: In the Beginning of it there is a rampant Scuffle, which I suppose our Author took from the Rankness of a Buttock-Ball.

2. sexual intercourse.

c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Buttock Ball. The Amourous Congress.
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.