First recorded in 1645–55; originally the kind of speech often heard at Billingsgate, a London fish market at the gate of the same name
Billingsgate is rude, abusive language. If a political debate is becoming nasty and insulting, it's good to have a moderator who will demand an end to the billingsgate. The British term billingsgate is less familiar in the U.S. — but it's a great way to refer to a particularly coarse form of verbal abuse. It comes from London's Billingsgate Fish Market, a 17th-century open-air market where ill-mannered fishmongers hollered raucously, haggling over prices using rude and vulgar language. The word can be used for any kind of foul-mouthed vituperation: "No arguing about sports rivalries at my birthday party! It always turns into pure billingsgate!"
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The object of all this billingsgate is a devoutly religious�and highly litigious�Quaker who has never been known to fire a shot, lift his fist, or even raise his soft voice in anger.
From Time Magazine Archive
Baggs' own opposition to the war earned him a barrage of billingsgate from hawks�who in turn received a rubber-stamp reply: "This is not a simple life, my friend, and there are no simple answers."
From Time Magazine Archive
Nor is he shy about lapsing occasionally into the Yorkshire-accented billingsgate that he has perfected over the years in leading T.U.C.'s toughest negotiations�including British Ford's acceptance of unions at Dagenham during World War II.
From Time Magazine Archive
Mrs. Huxley was rebuked because she, her husband and some other delegates had shown their disgust at the billingsgate of the pro-Communist intellectuals, who formed a majority of the stacked meeting.
From Time Magazine Archive
They exhausted the vocabulary of billingsgate in denouncing those guilty of this most henious of all sins, and charged them in plain terms, with being afraid to investigate or to discuss the subject.
From Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments Comprising the Writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartrwright on This Important Subject by Elliott, E. N.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
