Unless otherwise stated the definitions are adapted from the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1989).
alarm: a call to arms, a signal calling upon men to arm.
alcove: a vaulted recess in which is placed a bed of state: ‘in the close Alcove, /… Keppell and He are Ganymede and Jove’ (POAS, Yale, VI 18).
antic: absurd from fantastic incongruity, grotesque, bizarre, uncouthly ludicrous.
arrant: a variant of ‘errant’, ‘wandering, vagrant, vagabond’, which from its frequent use in such expressions as arrant thief, became an intensive, ‘thorough, notorious, downright’.
aspiring: desirous or advancement, ambitious.
balk: to pass over, overlook, refrain from noticing.
band: a falling collar, a pair of strips hanging down in front as part of a conventional dress, clerical, legal, or academic, resembling those worn by the Swiss Calvinist clergy.
bay: usually in plural: leaves or sprigs of bay-tree or laurel woven into a wreath or garland to reward a poet.
Bedlam: the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem, used as an asylum for mentally deranged persons; originally situated in Bishopsgate, in 1676 rebuilt near London Wall.
beer-glass: a glass holding half a pint.
before: in time previous to a time in question; already.
bend: bow in submission or reverence.
birthday coat: worn on the king’s birthday.
blade: a gallant, attentive to women.
blot: a disgrace, fault, blemish.
board: a table (obsolete).
broke: penniless.
bubble: one that is cheated (AND).
buggery: sexual intercourse of men with one another.
bulk: a framework projecting from the front of a shop.
cadet: a younger son or brother, traditionally impoverished.
carman: a carter, carrier.
cerecloth: cloth impregnated with wax, used as a plaster in surgery in the treatment of venereal disease; cf. Sir Carr Scrope is ‘lapt in sea cloth’; Sir Alexander Fraser ‘may cure his pox’ (HMC Rutland MSS., II37; Wilson 1976, 240).
chaffer: bargain, haggle about terms or price.
challenge: assert one’s title to, lay claim to, demand as a right (obsolete).
charming: exercising magic power.
City: that part of London situated within the ancient boundaries which is under the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor and Corporation; more particularly, the business part of this, in the neighbourhood of the Royal Exchange, the centre of financial and commercial activity.
civility: freedom from barbarity; the state of being civilized (Johnson 1755).
clip: clasp with the arms, embrace, hug.
close: sexual encounter.
clout: a piece of cloth, especially a small or worthless piece or one put to mean uses; slang for what is now called a sanitary towel (Rochester 1980, no).
clown: a countryman; one very ill-bred or unmannerly (AND).
coast quarter, part (obsolete).
cob: leader.
cokes: a silly fellow, simpleton, one easily taken in. Bartholomew Cokes is the comic victim in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1614).
colour: outward appearance, show.
combine: band together, confederate, or league.
comfortable: cf. ‘importance’.
common: free to be used by everyone; low-class, vulgar, unrefined.
complexioned: having a specified mental constitution, disposition, or temperament (obsolete).
conceited: having an overweening opinion of oneself (OED); wise in his own opinion (AND).
conventicle: a meeting of nonconformists, or dissenters from the Church of England, for religious worship during the period when such meetings were prohibited by law.
cony: a rabbit.
coxcomb: a fool, simpleton (obsolete).
creature: a human being, a term of reprobation or contempt; cf. ‘a thing’ (20.89).
cully: a fool or silly creature that is easily drawn in and cheated by whores or rogues (AND).
dainty: possessing delicate taste, fastidious; valuable, fine, choice, excellent.
dazzled: having lost the faculty of distinct and steady vision, especially from gazing at too bright light.
diet: take one’s ordinary meals.
Dingboy: a rogue, hector, bully, sharper (AND).
Discreetly: with self-regarding prudence.
Do the trick: accomplish one’s purpose, do what is wanted.
drawing room: shortened from wididrawing-room, a private chamber attached to a more public room.
drudge: toil at laborious and distasteful work.
dry: feeling no emotion.
dry-bob: coition without ejaculation (Partridge 1951).
elf: in a depreciatory sense, ‘a poor creature’.
engine: a mechanical contrivance, machine.
errant: straying from the proper course.
experience: experiments (obsolete).
expire: to have an orgasm.
fantastic: having a lively imagination; fanciful, impulsive, capricious.
fiddle: one to whose music others dance; hence, a mirth-maker, jester.
fill out: pour out.
first rate: of the first rate (said of vessels, especially of die old three-deckers carrying 74–120 guns, such as The Triumph on which Rochester served in die second Dutch War); hence of die highest class or degree of excellence.
flowers: menstrual discharge.
fold: posture adopted during sexual intercourse.
fond: having strong affection for; eager, desirous.
fop: a fool (obsolete).
foppery: foolishness, imbecility, stupidity, folly (obsolete).
from: in the scholastic philosophy, the essential determinant principle of a thing, that which makes anything (matter) a determinate species or kind of being.
fribblesb.: a trifling, frivolous fellow, easily beguiled, like Messer Nicia in Machiavelli’s Mandragola (1520) or Mr Fribble in Shadwell’s Epsom-Wells (1673).
frig: to masturbate.
gewgaw: splendidly trifling; showy without value (Johnson 1755).
give away: give up, resign, surrender (rare).
give over: desist, leave off.
glory: praise, honour, or admiration accorded by common consent to a person; a state of exaltation.
go for: pass as.
gossiping: a meeting of friends and acquaintances, especially at the birth of a child.
grace cups: the last cup of liquor drunk before retiring, a parting draught.
green-sickness: an anaemic disease, often characterized by morbid appetite for chalk, coal, etc., which affects young women about the age of puberty.
groat: a coin (1351–1662) worth four old pence.
gruntling: a low grunt.
handled: taken hold of (figuratively), examined, sized up.
hard-favoured: having an aspect harsh or unpleasant (OED) ugly (AND).
hard-pinched-for: stolen with difficulty (apparently Rochester’s coinage); cf. OED, Pinch, v. 15a.
heart: a jewel or ornament in the shape of a heart.
heats: a redness or eruption on the skin, accompanied by a sensation of heat.
heretofore: in time past.
horseman’s weight: the weight of a jockey in stones (14 lb = 1 stone).
huff: one puffed up with conceit of his own importance, valour, etc.; one who blusters or swaggers, a hector, a bully (obsolete).
ignis fatuus: ‘A phosphorescent light seen hovering or flitting over marshy ground… called Will-o’-the wisp.… When approached, the ignis fatuus appears to recede, and finally to vanish, sometimes reappearing in another direction. This led to the notion that it was the work of a mischievous sprite intentionally leading benighted travellers astray’ (OED).
impertinent: irrelevant; not consonant with reason; absurd, idle, trivial, silly.
importance comfortable: a wife (AND).
incommode: inconvenient, troublesome.
infamy: public reproach, shame, or disgrace; the loss of all or certain of the rights of a citizen.
insolent: offensively familiar.
insult on: manifest arrogant or scornful delight over, upon, or on an object of scorn (obsolete).
intrench: encroach or trespass upon.
jade: a term of reprobation applied to a woman.
japan: of, belonging to, native to, or produced in Japan; fashionable, exotic, ‘whatever is not common’ (30.59).
jingling: playing with words for the sake of sound.
job: a portion of some substance.
Jowler: here the name of a dog, but a jowler is a breed of heavy-jawed dogs, like basset hounds and mastiffs.
kickshaw: (a corruption of the French quelque chose) a fancy, insubstantial French dish.
kindly: in an easy, natural way.
kindness: kind feeling; a feeling of tenderness or fondness; affection, love.
knack: a trick, a device, artifice; formerly often a deceitful or crafty device; a mean or underhand trick.
knight of the elbow: a gambler.
ladies of the town: prostitutes.
lawn sleeves: sleeves of fine linen, part of the episcopal dress.
leg: an obeisance made by drawing back one leg and bending the other.
limber: limp.
lime: impregnate a bitch; copulate with.
linkboy: a boy employed to carry a torch made of tow and pitch to light passengers along the streets.
livelong: an emotional intensive of long, used of periods of time.
loose: free from moral restraint; lax in principle, conduct, or speech; immoral; not tightly drawn, slack.
love-convicted: overcome with love.
lumpish: stupidly dull, heavy, or lethargic.
magazine: a place where goods are laid up; a storehouse (now rare).
make: making or manufacture.
make away: destroy, dispose of, get rid of.
matter: physical or corporeal substance, contradistinguished from immaterial or incorporeal substance (spirit, soul, mind).
memento mori: (Latin) remember that you have to die; a warning of death.
mere: pure, unmixed (obsolete).
mutton: a woman (AND).
nice: precise, strict, careful; strange, rare, uncommon (obsolete); reluctant, unwilling (obsolete); refined, cultured. ‘In many examples from the 16th and 17th centuries it is difficult to say in what particular sense the writer intended the word to be taken’ (OED).
noise: reputation (obsolete).
nokes: a ninny or fool.
onset: attacking an enemy.
owl: ‘Applied to a person in allusion to… appearance of gravity and wisdom (often with implication of underlying stupidity)’ (OED).
owned: acknowledged.
parts: abilities, capacities, talents; also absolutely, high intellectual ability, cleverness, talent; a euphemism for genitals.
pathetic: producing an effect upon die emotions. ‘The sense of “miserably inadequate” is not recorded before 1937’ (OED).
pea-straw: the stalks and leaves of the pea-plant.
pit: the floor of a theatre; the theatre audience. ‘The Pit… is fill’d with Benches without Backboards, and adorn’d and cover’d with green Cloth. Men of Quality, particularly the younger Sort, some ladies of Reputation and Vertue, and abundance of Damsels that hunt for Prey, sit all together in this place, Higgledy-piggledy’ (Henri Misson, M. Misson’s Memoirs and Observations in his Travels over England (1719), 219).
play: gambling.
play booty: join with confederates in order to victimize another player; play or act falsely so as to gain a desired object; (proverbial) (Tilley B 539).
plead: urge as a plea.
pledge: something given as a sign or token of favour or as an earnest of something to come.
posy: ‘A syncopated form of Poesy, a short motto, originally a line or verse of poetry inscribed within a ring’ (OED cites Hamlet (1603), II ii 162: ‘Is this… the Poesie of a Ring?’).
precise: strict or scrupulous in religious observance; in the 16th and iydi centuries, ‘puritanical’ (OED); foolishly scrupulous (AND).
presently: without any delay, at once, immediately.
pretending: professing falsely, feigning.
primitive: original, as opposed to derivative.
prodigious: unnatural, abnormal, monstrous.
proper: belonging to oneself, own (archaic).
prove: show to be such as is asserted or claimed; find out or learn, or know by experience; have experience of.
provision: something provided or arranged in advance.
pug: here the name of a monkey, but ‘pug’ is a colloquial term for ‘monkey’.
purely: without blemish, corruption, or uncleanness; faultlessly, guilelessly, innocently.
puzzling: (transitive) laboriously trying to puzzle something out; (intransitive) bewildering, confusing (OED cites Thomas Sherlock, Several Discourses Preached at the Temple Church (1734), 42: ‘Mysteries… to puzzle the Minds of Men’).
qualm: a lit of sickening fear, misgiving, or depression.
ramble: a walk in search of sexual partners; cf. ‘Take you your Ramble, Madam, and I’ll take mine’ (Lee 1954,II 2).
recreation: comfort produced by something affecting the senses or body (obsolete).
refined: characterized by the possession of refinement in manners, action, or feeling; having a high degree of subtlety, nicety, or precision.
reforming: forming a second time.
rook: a cheat, swindler, or sharper, especially in gaming.
sad: sorrowful, mournful; grace, serious (obsolete).
salt-swol’n: in heat.
saucy: insolent towards superiors, presumptuous.
scarf: a broad band of silk worn by military officers across the body from one shoulder to the opposite hip.
scorbutic spots: ulcerations of the skin symptomatic of scurvy (vitamin C deficiency); ‘by how much they encline to blackness, so much the worse’ (Everard Maynwaring, Morbus Polyrhizos (1669), 51).
screw: to force or strain, as by means of a screw.
secure: to make free from care or apprehension; to free from doubt; to make one feel secure of or against some contingency (obsolete).
sense: intelligence, especially as bearing on action or behaviour.
serail: seraglio, apartments reserved for wives and concubines.
severe: rigorous in one’s treatment of or attitude towards offenders.
shade: the visible but impalpable form of a dead person; the total darkness before God said, ‘Let there be light’ (Genesis 1.3).
shore: sewer.
shrug: move the body from side to side as a gesture of joy or self-satisfaction; fidget about.
sillery: an expensive wine produced in and around the village of Sillery in Champagne.
slur: the sliding of a die out of the box so that it does not turn (obsolete) (OED); a cheat at dice (AND).
sot: a foolish or stupid person (obsolete).
spend: to ejaculate; to have an orgasm.
sponge: various species of porifers used in bathing.
sprittle staff: properly a spittle-staff or mattock, ‘A staff of wood four or five feet long, shod at the lower end with a wedge-like piece of iron, to stub thistles with’ (James O. Halliwell, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 2 vols. (1847), II 785).
sprung: of game birds: made to fly up.
squab: a raw, inexperienced person (obsolete); short, fat person. on the square: in a fair, honest, or straightforward manner; without artifice, deceit, fraud, or trickery.
stand: take up an offensive or defensive position; to await an onset; of the penis: to become erect.
stew: brothel.
still: continually, constantly, always.
stint: allotted amount, allowance.
stir: make any movement, move at all or in the least.
stone: a morbid concretion in the bladder, etc.
stout: valiant, brave, undaunted.
strangury: a disease of the urinary organs characterized by slow and painful urination (OED); ‘pissing by drops’ (Culpeper 1652, 49)
strike: cause a person to be overwhelmed or seized with terror, amazement, grief, or, rarely, love.
such: as much.
surfeit water: a medicinal drink for the cure of surfeit, a 17th-century Bromo-Seltzer.
swain: a man of low degree, a farm labourer, a countryman, a rustic (archaic).
swinger: a vigorous performer (obsolete); a person who is sexually promiscuous.
swive: copulate with.
take up: adopt.
take upon: put on airs.
take upon oneself: behave presumptuously or haughtily, assume airs (obsolete).
tawdry: dressed in cheap and pretentious finery (OED); ‘gawdy, with lace or mismatched and staring colours’ (AND).
tearing: violent, headstrong.
On tick: on credit.
tierce: a third of a pipe, or 14 gallons (of French claret in this case). ‘Tierce claret’ may be a phrase like ‘draught beer’.
trade: the practice of some occupation, business, or profession habitually carried on, especially when practised as a means of livelihood or gain, frequently in a depreciatory sense.
trading: tradesmanlike, perhaps ‘With sinister implication: [driving] a trade in something which should not be bought or sold’ (OED).
treat: carry on negotiations with a view to settling terms.
trim: cheat a person out of money, in this case by selling a spavined horse.
true-love knot: a kind of knot of a complicated and ornamental form (usually either a double-looped bow or a knot formed of two loops intertwined), used as a symbol of true love.
truth: faithfulness, fidelity (now rare or archaic).
try: have the experience of: undergo, go through (obsolete).
twat: the female pudendum.
unblest: sexually unsatisfied; cf. ‘the blest Lover’ (Pope 1939–67, II 205).
undo: unfasten the clothing of; ruin by seducing.
use: utility, advantage, benefit.
vassal: subject, subordinate.
whiffling: trifling, insignificant.
whimsey: a fantastic or freakish idea; a capricious notion or fancy.
whitewash: a cosmetic wash used for imparting a light colour to the skin (obsolete).
withdrawing room: a private chamber attached to a more public room.
women coursers: dealers in women (OED cites Beaumont and Fletcher, The Captain (1613), V i: ‘I am no Bawd, nor Cheater, nor a Courser / Of broken-winded women’).
women fairs: places for the sale (lit. or Jig.) of women.
worn: in fashion.