Military, or Officers’ Slang is on a par, and of a character with Dandy Slang. Inconvenient friends, or elderly and lecturing relatives, are pronounced DREADFUL BORES. Four-wheel cabs are called BOUNDERS; and a member of the Four-in-hand Club, driving to Epsom on the Derby day, would, using fashionable slang phraseology, speak of it as vehicle, if not a DRAG (or dwag) is a TRAP, or a CASK; and if the TURN OUT happens to be in other than a trim condition, it is pronounced at once as not DOWN THE ROAD. Your city swell would say it is not UP TO THE MARK; whilst the costermonger would call it WERY DICKEY. In the army a barrack or military station is known as a LOBSTER-BOX; to ” cram ” for an examination is to MUG-UP; to reject from the examination is to SPIN; and that part of the barrack occupied by subalterns is frequently spoken of as the ROOKERY. In dandy or swell Slang, any celebrity, from Robson of the Olympic, to the Pope of Rome, is a SWELL. Wrinkled faced old professors, who hold dress and fashionable tailors in abhorrence, are called AWFUL SWELLS, if they happen to be very learned or clever. I may remark that in this upper class Slang a title is termed a HANDLE; trousers, INEXPRESSIBLES; or when of a large pattern, or the inflated Zouave cut, HOWLING BAGS ; a superior appearance, EXTENSIVE; a four-wheeled cab, a BIRDCAGE; a dance, a HOP; dining at another man’s table, ” sitting under his MAHOGANY;” anything flashy or showy, LOUD; the peculiar make or cut of a coat, its BUILD; full dress, FULL-FIG ; wearing clothes which represent the very extreme of fashion, ” dressing to DEATH;” a reunion, a SPREAD; a friend (or a ” good fellow”), a TRUMP; a difficulty, a SCREW LOOSE; and everything that is unpleasant, ” from bad sherry to a writ from a tailor,” JEUCED INFERNAL. The military phrase, ” to send a man to COVENTRY,” or permit no person to speak to him, although an ancient saying, must still be considered Slang.

From: Hotten, John Camden: A dictionary of modern slang, cant, and vulgar words, used at the present day in the streets of London. (1860)