Crossword clues for billingsgate
billingsgate
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Billingsgate \Bil"lings*gate`\, n.
A market near the Billings gate in London, celebrated for fish and foul language.
Coarsely abusive, foul, or profane language; vituperation; ribaldry.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1670s, the kind of coarse, abusive language once used by women in the Billingsgate market on the River Thames below London Bridge.\nBillingsgate is the market where the fishwomen assemble to purchase fish; and where, in their dealings and disputes they are somewhat apt to leave decency and good manners a little on the left hand. ["Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," 1811]\nThe place name is Old English Billingesgate, "gate of (a man called) Billing;" the "gate" probably being a gap in the Roman river wall. The market is mid-13c., not exclusively a fish market until late 17c.
Wiktionary
n. profane, abusive language; coarse words vb. (cx transitive English) To use abusive language towards.
WordNet
n. foul-mouthed or obscene abuse [syn: scurrility]
Wikipedia
Billingsgate is one of the 25 Wards of the City of London. Its name derives from being the City's original water gate, and this small City Ward is situated on the north bank of the River Thames between London Bridge and Tower Bridge in the south-east of the Square Mile.
The modern Ward extends south to the Thames, west to Lovat Lane and Rood Lane, north to Fenchurch Street and Dunster Court, and east to Mark Lane and St Dunstan's Hill.
Usage examples of "billingsgate".
Prep Three was just down the corridor, and she entered to find Billingsgate poring over the high-detail plate there.
Like most surgeons Melinda had dealt with, Billingsgate had strong proprietary feelings toward his operation designs, but he was also experienced enough not to simply ignore the recommendations of a good consultant.
Swinging wide round the riotous congestion of Billingsgate and the broad Key before the Customs House, they pounced upon Tower Wharf.
He cackled and set off back toward Billingsgate, beginning to tap his cane ahead of him when he was a hundred feet away.
He was referring, not to the boys scavenging coal, but to classes of people doing business on the northern shore of Billingsgate Dock.
Johann and Caroline had set out in the opposite direction, planning a ride of three miles or so straight through the heart of London to Billingsgate Stairs, immediately downstream of the Bridge, where a longboat would take them out to a Hanoverian sloop.
All of these mutual gropings could be excused on grounds that the Princess must not be allowed to fall into the cold stew of fish-innards that was Billingsgate Dock.
The Kit-Cat Caravan began to mount up: and so the last they saw of the Clubb were scintillations of cut-crystal stirrup-cups and of the silver trays on which they were brought around, faint as gleaming of fish-scales on the black waters that lapped at Billingsgate Stairs.
And so all commerce in fish and coal was suspended for an hour as the galley forced its way into Billingsgate Dock.
Around Billingsgate dock, homeless beggars stirred in the doorways and alcoves where they had taken shelter.
The inhabitants of Westminster had long laboured under the want of a fish-market, and complained that the price of this species of provision was kept up at an exorbitant rate by the fraudulent combination of a few dealers, who engrossed the whole market at Billingsgate, and destroyed great quantities of fish, in order to enhance the value of those that remained.
The building beside the old Billingsgate Market had never been properly finished, and now its poorly set foundations had been pulled up to clear the site and make way for a new Japanese banking syndicate.
Between the building that housed it and the sluggish grey waters of the Thames ran a four-lane road that passed alongside the gilt statues of Billingsgate on its way to the Tower of London.
This good-humored billingsgate is largely monotonous and not significant, mere verbal punctuation of a sort, and its appearance in print annoys some readers.
For about a year before the murder, Mary Jane Kelly had been living on and off with a Billingsgate Market fish porter named Joseph Barnett.