Thieves Cant, modern English and a revival

[wingsandsword]

I'll admit I was never big into the idea of Thieves Cant in D&D. The idea that every member of the Thief/Rogue class knew a secret language that let them have an illicit discussion in public while sounding like they were having a mundane conversation nobody else could pick up on just stretched belief for me.

DM's usually depicted it as being like two thieves meeting, talking banalities about the weather for a couple of minutes, and they've made a detailed plan for a robbery in that time. I couldn't wrap my mind around that.

Then I saw this news article about Thieves Cant being revived in modern-day England: Convicts use ye olde slang to fool guards | Mail Online . . .with new words added/created to reference modern-day concepts like Phone SIM cards or various drugs. Prisoners spoke in apparently mundane speech talking about planning visits from the outside, but were scheduling drug shipments, using revived Elizabethan-era cant with some new words added for the modern age. Prison guards were stunned.

I did some more checking, and while most of the traditional "Thieves Cant" I could find seemed esoteric and strange, I did find this glossary taken from late 18th and early 19th century sources:

Thieves Cant

More specifically, I noticed a number of words in Thieves Cant have the same (or very close) meaning in modern English that they had in the Cant, the words/phrases went mainstream.

Hubbub = riot
Hush money = bribe
Flog = To whip
Hoodwink = to fool someone
Jail bird = a prisoner
Lift = to steal
"left in the lurch" = betrayed by ones companions
Made man = member of a thieves guild
Nab = To seize
Pig = Officer of the law
Rot gut = cheap liquor
Shoplifter = thief who steals from shops
Slang = Thieves Cant (We use it for much more now, but it looks like this was an early form of what we now call slang)

"I lifted some rotgut, then I had to pay hush money to a pig or he'd nab me and I would end up a jail bird for being a shoplifter" or "Nobody hoodwinks a made man." or "I was really left in the lurch after the hubbub, " are valid sentences in 18th century Thieves Cant. . .which also make complete sense as valid, but informal, expressions with the same or very close to the same meanings in modern 21st century English.

(Amusingly, this glossary warns against letting "Children use it in their games" as
"the material is of an adult nature" since vocabulary for prostitution is part of the cant, guess the author thought only little kids played D&D)

 

[Deuce Traveler]

It was more than just language. Buildings would have a certain mark which could identify a criminal establishment and its particular illicit activity. Symbols and signs cross borders easier than spoken language.

 

[Viking Bastard]

You've never seen old Michael Caine movies?

Rhyming slang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Umbran]

Yah. I always took Thieve's Cant was Common's version of Cockney rhyming slang. Something you need to be part of the "in crowd" to know and maintain current.

 

[Croesus]

An outstanding source for thieve's cant from Victorian England is Michael Crighton's novel The Great Train Robbery". He does a good job of explaining the terms as he uses them to add atmosphere to the book.

Here are a few of the terms from the book:
Crusher: policeman
Screwsman: specialist in keys and safecracking
Snakesman: someone adept at wriggling through tight spaces, usually a child
Screever: writer of false letters of recommendation
Putter-up: someone who puts up the money for a job
Doing a bit of soft: counterfeiting
Put in lavender: gone into hiding, or dead
Pull: heist
Ream flash pull: a significant heist
Petter cutter: a drill that clamps to the keyhole of a safe and permits a hole to be drilled over the lock

Here's a link to many such terms.

Victorian Slang Glossary

 

[Nytmare]

It's not theives' cant, but a depression era secret language that has survived, and you can still find examples of today, are vagabond signs.

Hobo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hoboglyphs: Secret Transient Symbols & Modern Nomad Codes | WebUrbanist

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Thieves' Cant especially in plate mail

 

[Greylond]

Actually, many years ago at college I did some research on it and found out that there was a book about Thieves Cant in England published in the mid-17th century. I'll have to see if I can find it again...

 

[DMKastmaria]

Here's a dictionary that's been on the web, forever. Taken from an early 19th century source, which was based on an earlier 18th century publication.

The Guide to Thieves Cant for AD&D

 

[MGibster]

Sailor Speak

"Me and Willy were lollygagging by the scuttlebutt after being aloft to boy butter up the antennas and were just perched on a bollard eyeballing a couple of bilge rats and flangeheads using crescent hammers to pack monkey around a fitting on a handybilly.

All of a sudden the dicksmith started hard-assing one of the deck apes for lifting his pogey bait. The pecker-checker was a sewer pipe sailor and the deckape was a gator. Maybe being blackshoes on a bird farm surrounded by a gaggle of cans didn't set right with either of those gobs."

I admit it, a long time ago the concept of a Thieves Cant sounded really silly to me for the same reason it sounded silly to wingsandsword. Sailors were another group of people who seemed to have a language of their own. In the United States, modern gang members seem to have a language of their own as well.