Green’s Dictionary of Slang

drunkenness.

1884

Sporting Times 15 Nov. 3/1: Peter has contrived to cram three days blindness into every twenty-four hours.

1. (UK Und.) an inn or tavern whose customers are mainly villains.

c.1535		Copland Hye Way to Spytell Hous lines 267-8: Than to theyr lodgynge they do take theyr way / In to some aley lane or blynde hostry.
1550		Walker Manifest Detection D5r: That whiles the strete & company gather to the fray [...] the barnard steales away withall the stuffe, & pickes him to one blinde tauerne or other [...] & ther abidith the comming of his companions to make an equall porcion of the gain.
1590		Lyly Galatea I iv: All. What shall we do, being tossed to shore? Robinn. Milk some blind tavern, and there roar.
1592		Greene Notable Discovery n.p.: The Barnard steales away with all the coine, and gets him to one blinde Tauerne or other, where these Cooseners had appointed to meete.
1608		Dekker Belman of London n.p.: They seeke out some blinde victualing house, or Cookes house, without the barres, whose Host (if it be possible) is either an asse easie to be ridden, or else a common drunkard.
1625		‘ Allegations of Rachel Humbletoft’ in Vice-Chancellor’s Court Records n.p.: Your father keepes a base blind alehouse and you shalbe hung up for signes to it: you stand at the doare to troule in guests and schollers and you gripe them and make them so thredde bare that one may see a lowse on their apparrell and gownes a mile of.
c.1630		‘John Jarret’ in Pepys Ballads I 170: When you in your shop should be plying your worke, / In some scurvy blinde Alehouse you all day doe lurke.
1674-79		Londons Ordinary: or, Every man in his humour [ballad] The Cheater will dine at the Chequer, / the Pick-pocket at a blind Ale-house, / Till taken and tride up Holbourn they ride, / and make their end at the gallows.
1680		Bunyan Life & Death of Mr Badman in Works (1767) 749/2: About a bow shot from where I once dwelt, there was a blind alehouse, and the man that kept it had a son whose name was Edward.
1681		C. Oudin Extravagant Poet 2: It was my Fortuine, to light into a little blind Tavern.
1695		‘Great News from Southwark: or, the Old Woman's Legacy to her Cat’ in http://www.susannacalkins.com 10 Aug. (2014) 🌐 Giving An Account of an Old Miserable Woman, who lately kept a blind ale-house, in St. Tooley-Streat, near the Burrough of Southwark [etc].
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Hedge-Tavern or Ale-house, a Jilting, Sharping Tavern, or Blind Alehouse [Ibid] A Blind Ale-house, or Blind Lane, obscure, of no Sign, Token, or Mark.
1710		Swift Journal to Stella VII Oct. (1814) 61: After dinner we went to a blind tavern, where Congreve, Sir Richard Temple, Eastcourt, and Charles Main were over a bowl of bad punch.
1725		New Canting Dict. n.p.: A BLIND ALE-HOUSE, an Alehouse fit to conceal a pursu’d or hunted Villain; a Place of no Mark, Token or Sign.
1735		Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals n.p.: Finding it however impossible to get him along, I was even glad to take up at a little blind alehouse which I perceived had a yard and a stable behind it.
1756		Bailey Universal Etymological Eng. Dict. n.p.: A BLIND ALEHOUSE, one fit to conceal a pursued or hunted Villain.

2. (UK Und.) a tavern that permits whores to work on its premises; a house of assignation.

1579		S. Gosson Schoole of Abuse n.p.: Every vauter in one blind tavern or other is tenant at will [...] There she is so entreated with words and received with courtesy that every back room in the house is at her commandment.
1664		Pepys Diary Nov. 15 (1894) 270: I to the ’Change, and thence Bagwell’s wife with much ado followed me through Moorfields to a blind alehouse, and there I did caress her and eat and drink.
1669		Pepys Diary Apr. 15 (1893) 2285: I led her into a little blind alehouse within the walls, and there she and I alone fell to talk and baiser la and toker su mammailles.

(US gay) an uncircumcised penis.

1988

H. Max Gay (S)language.

(US gay) an uncircumcised penis.

c.1925		R. McAlmon Miss Knight (1963) 66: You know I hate – well, you know – blind meat – you know what I mean.
1965		Guild Dict. Homosexual Terms 4: blind meat (n.): Uncircumcised penis.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.

very drunk.

1791		‘Song’ in New Vocal Enchantress 33: Tipsy, dizzy, muzzy, sucky, groggy, muddled, / Bosky, blind as Chloe, mops and brooms and fuddled.
1804		C.L. Lewes Comic Sketches 27: Rocky — Groggy — Blind as Chloe — Mops and Brooms, — and many other appellations too tedious to mention.
1998		J.A. Ferguson Model Marriage 115: ‘You would be trying to get as blind as Chloe too, if you have suffered the indignity that I have.’ [...] He held up his glass and laughed.

(US) lit. or fig, extremely bright or colourful; extremely intense, overpowering.

1915		Aerial Age Wkly 2 82: [T]he titles of the officers are truly flashy and gaudy enough to make a blind man blink . They are ‘president-general; deputy-president-general ’ [etc].
1984		W.D. Myers Motown and Didi 136: [H]e would shoot them back a glance that would curdle water, that would make a blind man blink, that would stop babies from growing.
2003		P. Morabito Plane Hell 1: The focus in his eyes is enough to make a blind man blink.

(US gay) to fellate an uncircumcised penis.

1965		Guild Dict. Homosexual Terms 29: make the blind (to) see (v.): Fellation on an uncircumcised penis.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.
1988		H. Max Gay (S)language.

the vagina.

1937–84

Partridge DSUE (1984) 84/1: C.19–20.

see blind n.² (2)

the penis.

c.1670		Rochester ‘A Dream’ n.p.: I look’d and saw the blind boy’s happy Cloyster/ Arch’d on both sides, lay gaping like an Oyster.
1787		Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies 80: As small but easily stretched passage, whose depth none but the blind boy has liberty to fathom.
[1788		Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies 46: I’ll expose every part / Of my brown apple cart, / And stifle , quite stifle, the boy in its charms .
1790		Banquet of Wit 101: Sentiments and Toasts [...] The blind fellow who enters into perilous engagements and is best pleased when he gets his head broke.

a partially sighted person.

1774		J. Granger Supp. to Biog. Hist. Eng. II 408: Jack Adams, professor of the celestial sciences at Clerk- enwell-Green, was a blind buzzard who pretended to have the eyes of an eagle.
1784		(ref. to 1653)Owen & Johnston (eds) New & General Biog. Dict. 42: In 1653 [...] Our author, in his annotations upon Jeremiah, taking notice of this profaneness, had used the astrologer a little roughly, calling him blind buzzard, &c.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1815		Morn. Post (London) 11 Mar. 3/4: To serve you all most readily inclined, / Yet not against myself, as Buzzard blind.
1819		Morn. Chron. (London) 6 Sept. 2/1: A blind buzzard is reverenced as saint, and quick sighted man shunned like a sharper.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1834		Dublin Obs. 27 Sept. 4/5: Is there anyone but the blind buzzard that does not see that it is to the increase of taxes aone that these evils are to be attributed.
1847		London Dly News 16 Jan. 2/2: he is represented to the jury as [...] a blind buzzard who cannot see when it is hopeless.
[1855		Stonehaven Jrnl 3 May n.p.‘P.Q.’ is blind as a buzzard when reason is concerned]: .
1862		Cork Examiner 14 Oct. 3/6: You blind buzzard, don’t you see you are skedaddling [i.e. spilling] all that milk.

see blind n.² (2)

see under charlie n.¹

the posteriors; thus buss blind cheeks, kiss my arse.

1607		Dekker & Webster Northward Hoe II i: Ile make him know how to kisse your blind cheekes sooner.
1623		Fletcher & Rowley Maid in the Mill II ii: Shut in those golden eyne, And I will kisse those sweet blind cheeks of thine.
1639		J. Taylor Crabtree Lectures 29: I had as live thou kisst me where I sat [...] for to thee the the cheekes with eies and the blind cheekes are all one.
1655		Mercurius Fumigosus 31 Jan. 3: He is to have five shillings for his paines and to have a danderly Buss from the blinde cheeks of the Py-womans Daughter.
1664		C. Cotton Virgil Travestie (1765) Bk IV 77: Than blind Cheeks blinder, / She threw all Care and Shame behind her.
1673		J. Wade Vinegar & Mustard Br: He was thrust up his Aul into her blind cheeks.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Blind-cheeks, the Breech. Kiss my Blind-cheeks, Kiss my Ar--.
1725		New Canting Dict.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
c.1750–1882		B.M. Carew Life and Adventures.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Blind cheeks. The breech. Buss blind cheeks; kiss mine a-se.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
[c.1850		Peeping Tom (London) 14 54/2: Is shock’d to find Miss Bunn, when on the grass, / Was so alarm’d at seeing of my ass / [...] / The harmless creature is entirely blind / And makes no noise].
1889–90		Barrère & Leland Dict. of Sl., Jargon and Cant.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1896		Farmer Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 265: visage, m. The backside; ‘the blind cheeks’.

1. an ugly blind man.

1599		Nashe Praise of the Red Herring 42: And what will not blinde Cupid doe in the night which is his blindmans holiday?
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.

2. the buttocks.

1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.

see separate entry.

(UK society) a chaperon(e).

1923

J. Manchon Le Slang.

see separate entry.

(UK Und.) a country fair, unattached to a specific town, that permits illegal activities, e.g. horse-coping.

1592		Greene Second Part of Conny-Catching n.p.: Now if the Priggars steale a horse in Yorkeshire, commonly they haue vent for him in Surrey, Kent, or Sussex, and their Martars that receiue them at his hand, chops them away in some blind Faires after they haue kept them a moneth or two, till the hue and crie be ceast and past ouer.
1612		Dekker O per se O n.p.: But (alas!) the horses are at pasture fourescore or a hundred miles from their olde mangers: they were sould at some blinde drunken théeuish faire [Ibid.] At the end of fierce battailes, the onely Rendeuouz for lame souldiers to retire vnto, is an Hospitall: and at the end of a long Progresse, the onely ground for a tyred Iade to runne in, is some blind country faire, where hée may be sure to be sold.

see separate entry.

a form of stew without meat, effecticely a thick vegetable soup.

1978

A. Burgess 1985 (1980) 148: he was given a plate of blind hash and a mug of sweet tea.

a beggar who fakes blindness, distracting attention from the disguise by playing a harp or fiddle.

1664		C. Cotton Virgil Travestie (1765) Bk I 12: Quoth he, Blind Harpers, have among ye, / ’Tis ten to one but I bedung ye.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew.
1719		A. Smith Lives of Most Notorious Highway-men, etc. (1926) 202: Blind Harper, beggars counterfeiting blindness, with harps or fiddles.
1725		New Canting Dict. n.p.: blind harpers Canters who counterfeit Blindness, stroll about with Harps, Fiddles, Bagpipes, &c. led by a Dog or Boy.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1809		G. Andrewes Dict. Sl. and Cant.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1812–82		B.M. Carew Life and Adventures.
1821		Flash Dict.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict. 6: Blind harpers – itinerant vagabonds with harps.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open [as cit. 1835].
c.1850		Duncombe New and Improved Flash Dict.

madness, foolishness, a leap in the dark; also as adj.

[1828		‘A Flat Enlightened’ Life in the West I 130: [headline] A Land at Blind Hookey].
1846		London Dly News 18 Mar. 4/5: In a like way, the police magistrate [...] desires the accused blood-shedder not to ‘show his cards.’ After this most guarded fashion does English justice play at blind hokey!
1852		Dublin Eve. Mail 24 Dec. 2/2: ‘The game of Blind Hookey’ — it cannot be called anything else — still continues. The signs of the game [...] are most amusing [...] and the writhing of the radical press as the bait ways backwards and forward, are ludicrous.
1875		Leicester Dly Mercury 13 Oct. 2/5: What the proposers of Purchase want to do, is to plunge into an enterprise, involving unprecedented outlay [...] and without knowing what prospect of profit there may be upon it — in short, Mr Alderman Winterton wishes to play the game of ‘blind hookey’.
1893		P.H. Emerson Signor Lippo 67: When I left you on the course to go on a blind hooky job for the boss.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era.

see under jam n.¹

see separate entry.

see separate entries.

(US) a smoked herring.

1879		Red Cloud Chief (Webster Co., NE) 10 July 1/4: I want [...] beef steak and onions with a blind robin thrown in as a relish.
1882		Stark Co. Democrat (Canton, OH) 5 Jan. 6/3: Dr Morris received [...] a pretzel and a blind robin.
1897		Forest Republican (Tionesta, PA) 7 Apr. 4/3: They both returned with a dried herring on a string. Any man that can catch a ‘blind robin’ in the Allegheny river is a good fisherman.
1902		Ade Forty Modern Fables 222: [He] seeped up frequent High Balls, accompanied by a little Snack of Oyster Crackers, the embalmed Herring known as the Blind Robin.
1913		South Bend News-Times (IN) 17 Nov. 2/3: ‘Blind robin? What’s that, Cap?’ [...] ‘It’s a dried fish — dried herrin’, I guess they call them’.
1918		Ward Co. Indep. (Minot, ND) 21 Feb. 4/1: Blind robin on days that are meatless.
1931		Ade Old-Time Saloon 48: Referring, of course, to your old playmate known as the Dried Herring, alias the Black-Eyed Susan, alias the Blind Robin.

see separate entry.

see staggers n.

see separate entry.

(US) a generic blind man, the linguistic equivalent of Aus. blind Freddie n. (1)

1905

F. Hutchison Philosophy of Johnny the Gent 14: [R]ight there at the top o’ the page is a spiel, printed in letters that Blind Tom could read [etc].

see separate entry.

see separate entry.

1. night-time.

1599		Nashe Praise of the Red Herring 42: And what will not blinde Cupid doe in the night which is his blindmans holiday?
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Blind-man’s-holiday, when it is too dark to see to Work.
1725		New Canting Dict. n.p.: blind man’s holyday, when it is Night.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1809		G. Andrewes Dict. Sl. and Cant.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1866		Aunt Judy’s Mag. Oct. 358: At meal times, or in blindman’s holiday, when no work was to be done [F&H].
1873		Sl. Dict.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1902		A. Morrison Hole in the Wall (1947) 187: The dark was closing on him fast. ‘Blind man’s holiday,’ muttered Dan Ogle.
1910		Gloucester Citizen 3 Aug. 6/5: After tea [...] swinging and games were resumed until ‘blindman’s holiday’ drew near.
[1950		Taunton Courier 9 dec. 5/3: [He] said driving conditions in Bristol-road at night was [sic] like a blind man’s holiday].

2. nightfall, the dusk.

1738

Swift Polite Conversation 93: lady ans.: O, Madam, no Candles yet, I beseech you; don’t let us burn Day-Light. [...] lady sm.: Indeed, Madam, it is blind Man’s Holiday; we shall soon be all of a Colour.

see under O’Reilly n.