billingsgate
Americannoun
noun
noun
Etymology
Origin of billingsgate
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
Explanation
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!"
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
And there, some say, he also goes in for union-busting and Bowery billingsgate.
From Time Magazine Archive
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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
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The best Baedeker of billingsgate and other U.S. lingua frank since Mencken.
From Time Magazine Archive
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Nonsmokers, who used to say mildly, "Would you mind not smoking?" have moved up to billingsgate.
From Time Magazine Archive
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The prolongation of the billingsgate in the contest between Cleon and the sausage-seller grows wearisome to modern taste; but the portrait of the Demagogue is for all time.
From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 2 by Mabie, Hamilton Wright
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.