This site is on travel hiatus for the next three weeks, but I promise lots of goodies and pictures when I return.

That means Regency Word of the Day is on vacation for three weeks too. However, if you would like to suggest Regency words of the day under this post’s comments, they will be the first word of the day posts when I return!

Also, feel free to contact me on the contact page. I put in this caveat on the page though — “Please note however that I will be unavailable to respond until the middle of July due to traveling without an Internet connection. The good news is that someone is staying at my place with my cats during that time, or else they would eat me upon my return and I’d never be able to respond…”

So I thought maybe you’d like to see hungry, evil cats at work…

A toy-shop, a nick-nack-atory.

–From the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

For some reason nick-nack-atory makes me want to sing Mary Poppins tunes…

A jocular method of hobbling or bothering a troublesome teller of long stories: this is done by contradicting some very immaterial circumstance at the beginning of the narration, the objections to which being settled, others are immediately started to some new particular of like consequence; thus impeding, or rather not suffering him to enter into, the main story. Kittle pitchering is often practised in confederacy, one relieving the other, by which the design is rendered less obvious.

–From the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

Love this.

A dancing-master, so called from his kit or cittern, a small fiddle, which dancing-masters always carry about with them, to play to their scholars. The kit is likewise the whole of a soldier’s necessaries, the contents of his knapsack: and is used also to express the whole of different commodities: as, Here, take the whole kit; i.e. take all.

–From the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

Disposition, principles, humour. Of a strange kidney; of an odd or unaccountable humour. A man of a different kidney; a man of different principles.

–From the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

1811 Vulgar Tongue

To coax or wheedle. To inveigle. To amuse a man or divert his attention while another robs him. The sneaksman kidded the cove of the ken, while his pall frisked the panney; the thief amused the master of the house, while his companion robbed the house.

1811 Vulgar Tongue

A little dapper fellow. A child. The blowen has napped the kid. The girl is with child.

The word kid is not anachronistic to the time period.

1811 Vulgar Tongue

Breeches. A high kick; the top of the fashion. It is all the kick; it is the present mode. Tip us your kicks, we’ll have them as well as your lour; pull off your breeches, for we must have them as well as your money. A kick; sixpence. Two and a kick; half-a-crown. A kick in the guts; a dram of gin, or any other spirituous liquor. A kick up; a disturbance, also a hop or dance. An odd kick in one’s gallop; a strange whim or peculiarity.

1811 Vulgar Tongue

When a person has perplexed his affairs in general, or any particular business, he is said to have made a fine kettle of fish of it.

Merriam-Webster

A bad state of affairs : mess : something to be considered or reckoned with : matter (books and discs… were two very different kettles of fish — Roland Gelatt)

1811 Vulgar Tongue

A punishment in use among the Dutch seamen, in which, for certain offences, the delinquent is drawn once, or oftener, under the ship’s keel: ludicrously defined, undergoing a great hard-ship.

Merriam-Webster

To haul under the keel of a ship as punishment or torture : to rebuke severely