We tend to think of specialised jargon as a modern phenomenon, corporate gobbledegook associated with mainstream occupations. The reality is most groups across many eras develop their own expressions and idioms, often amounting to a secret code, primarily designed to exclude outsiders. For the organised criminal gangs that flourished in late 17th-century London, such arcane language was useful, potentially saving them from the ­scaffold, given that over 200 crimes, including ­petty theft, were punishable by execution.

When an anonymous antiquarian known to history simply as “BE” compiled A New ­Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, in Its Several Tribes, of Gypsies, Beggers, Thieves, Cheats, &c. (whatever BE’s other logophile gifts, coining a snappy title was not among them) in 1698, lawless London stood exposed. The ­banditts, adam-tilers and fencing-cullies looking to prey on unwitting buzzards, fat culls and, splendidly, fuddlecaps, cannot have been best pleased. No doubt the cool kids of the day were delighted, however, in the same way today’s hipsters love to parade rhyming slang and gangsta patois.

A rare first edition of this early crime avoidance manual will soon come up for auction in Cirencester. Its colourful 4,000 entries show that besides the timeless eloquence of Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Pepys and Locke, plus the classic reworking of the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible, the 1600s also fostered a vivid ­language of the street and the slum.

Say what you will about endemic killer plague, non-existent sanitation, rudimentary personal hygiene, lethal religious sectarianism, brutal ­infant mortality, woeful life expectancy, shoddy nutrition and questionable fashion, as regards the imaginative use of the written and spoken word, the 17th century takes some beating.

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/the-times-view/article/times-view-villains-slang-canting-crew-fx66zk7hg