moss n.
1. (UK Und.) lead [‘grows on the top’ of buildings].
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Hell Upon Earth 5: Moss, Lead. | |
| Memoirs (1714) 13: Moss, Lead. | |
| , | | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) n.p.: moss A cant term for lead, because both are found on the tops of buildings. |
| Lex. Balatronicum. | |
| Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. | |
| Londres et les Anglais 316/1: moss, [...] du plomb. |
2. as forms of hair.
(a) the pubic hair, usu. female; thus mossy adj.
| Barnabees Journal IV D2: Where sweet birds doe hatch their airy, / Arbours, Oysters freshly showing / With soft mossie rinde or’e growing. | |
| ‘From a Gentleman to his Mistress’ Wits Interpreter (1671) 174: Of polisht Ivory is thy Globe-like belly, [...] And under that same snowy swelling mountain, Coverd with moss, doth stand a milky Fountain. | |
| Ladies Delight 1: When it doth further shoot, / A Tuft of Moss keeps warm the Root. | |
| Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1985) 11: Her fingers play’d, and strove to twine in the young tendrils of that moss which nature has contrived at once for use and ornament. | |
| Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies 79: [T]he pleasure-gulph of natured beautifully shaded with a downy brown-coloured moss. | |
| Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies 55: Flow’ry mountains, / Mossy fountains, / Shady woods, / Christal floods, / With wild variety surprize. | |
| Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies 55: Her fountain, whence flows the impending flood (sometimes like chrystal, and sometimes like amber) is edged with delicate moss. | |
| Sporting Mag. Nov. V 112/1: Breasts! proudly swelling o’er the plain below, / Where beds of moss midst snowy borders grow! | |
| ‘Runnymede Pillar’ in Hilaria 31: [of male genitals] O’erjoy’d did she trace the moss round its [i.e. the ‘pillar’] base / But its altitude did her chaste senses appal. | |
| ‘The Death Of Peg The Mot’ Frisky Vocalist 14: She would expose her charms, / With downy moss o’erspread. | |
| ‘When The Pip Hath Bereft Thee!’ Nobby Songster 17: When the moss all has left thee, / That grew ’neath thy clothes. | |
| Peeping Tom (London) 1 2/2: In infancy I knew a spot, / Where flowers had never blown; / Where creeping moss had never got, / Where seed was never sown. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Venus’ Miscellany (NY) 31 Jan. n.p.: [I] quickly entered the charming moss-grown cave. | |
| ‘The Love Feast’ Stories the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell (1994) 58: One, more wanton than the rest / Seized on love’s moss-bounded nest. | |
| Rosa Fielding 17: [N]ot that he was an unwelcome visitor at any time in the mossy retreat. | |
| ‘Sub-Umbra, Or Sport Among The She-Noodles’ in Pearl 1 July 4: ‘Feel here the dart of love all impatient to enter the mossy grotto between your thighs,’ I whispered. | |
| Cremorne I 9: Your sweet, moist, mossy, soft, and virgin pussy [...] The dear girl has hardly got a bit of moss on her dear little cunt . | |
| ‘Three Chums’ in Boudoir III 89: Groping on the one side the soft incipient moss of the elder one's grot, as well as the hairless slit of her little sister. | |
| Sheaves from an Old Escritoire 29: Between my legs [...] I was just growing a fine moss-like tuft. | |
| Sixfold Sensuality 26: The round the Abbé’s dolly rubbing against the moss round her milk can. | |
| Life & Amours I 5: [I] carried my hand to my own moss-covered retreat. | |
| Geronimo Rex 35: You saw her totally nude and even her moss about five seconds before the strobe lights went out. | |
| hipslang.com 🌐 moss: (n.) a girl’s box ex. pheww her moss smells swamp! |
(b) (US) hair, esp. of the head.
| A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 43: Tobasco charged Hash with trying to cheat the barbers by refusing to have his moss trimmed. | |
| Sporting Times 1 Jan. 3/1: Albert, King of the Belgians, has removed his facial moss. | |
| Mutt & Jeff 30 Nov. [synd. strip] I’ve always wanted moss on my dome. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Trails Plowed Under 65: He wears long moss on his chin. | |
| Really the Blues 131: A hand-picked harem of bathing beauties to manicure his toenails and shampoo his moss. | |
| Jives of Dr. Hepcat (1989) 7: Well I guess I’ll ooze on down to the crib and get on the beam for the hop tonight. I’ve got to take a rub down in water and you must believe l’ve got to gas my moss. | |
| Pinktoes (1989) 125: If colored people has straight moss and white people had kinky moss, it would make everybody equal. | |
| World’s Toughest Prison 809: moss – Hair. | |
| Ball Four 272: Moss is hair. |
(c) (US black) black hair.
| Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 9 Sept. 11/1: Brother Jones has cropped his hair short to save the [cash] he once spent on ‘Konk’ and now his moss isn’t glossy any more . | |
| Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 16: Some good-doing moss without the unhipped gloss. | |
| (con. 1930s–50s) Night People 118: Moss. Hair. | |
| Lang. of Ethnic Conflict 47: Allusions to Other Physical Difference: moss. |
(d) (US gay) chest hair.
| Queens’ Vernacular 138: moss chest hair. mossy having hair on the chest. |
3. money [? both are ‘green’ or pvb ‘a rolling stone – ? a tramp – gathers no moss’].
| Vocabulum. | |
| Sl. and Its Analogues. | |
| Dly Dispatch (Richmond, VA) 1 Nov. 3/3: [Villains] have lots of names for money, such as [...] ‘moss’. | |
| Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 7 June 9/6: Slang of Money [...] It has been called ‘the actual, the blunt, hard, dirt, evil, flimsy, gilt, iron, John Davis, lurries, moss, oil of angels, pieces, rowdy, spondulicks, tin, wad’ . |
In compounds
US a prostitute.
| Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 2 Apr. n.p.: The down-east mossbunker came in for no small share of the gaudy baubles. |
a miser.
| (con. WWI) Soldier and Sailor Words 159: Moss Dog: A stingy fellow. |
the female genitals.
| Phoebe Kissagen 34: I being laid on my back, he mounted me [...] Then Chloe, sitting on the head of the sofa, offered him her moss rose. | |
| Sl. and Its Analogues. |
(US black) a barber.
| Jives of Dr. Hepcat (1989) 7: Before I come on with the gas I’ve got to pick up on a barber because my rug needs much dusting after I get with the moss snatcher the nob will be in great shape. |
SE in slang uses
In compounds
of a thing, old-fashioned or conservative.
| Sporting Times 1 Mar. 1/3: His Optics Glimmered on an Old and Mossgrown Horse, who was Filling himself Up on the Wisp, or business end of a Broom. | |
| Boss 179: Is it not remarkable, how fondly even an advanced man like my father will cling to the moss-grown and obsolete? |
see moss-back n. (2)