The first profanity we’d like to rescue is mutton monger, an Elizabethan era term that describes a pimp. The term mutton once was used to describe prostitutes, so the mutton monger was the guy selling those nice cuts of meat.

The term can be found in Thomas Dekker’s 1604 play The Second Part of the Honest Whore, which is about a prostitute named Bellafront, her husband (and former john) Matheo and her father Orlando Friscobaldo. Orlando and Matheo aren’t getting along:

Orlando: She like a quean, thou like a knave; she like a whore, thou like a thief.

Matheo: Thief? Zounds! Thief?

Bellafront: Good, dearest Mat! — Father!

Mat: Pox on you both. I’ll not be braved. New satin scorns to be put down with bare bawdy velvet. Thief?

Orl: Ay, thief, th’art a murderer, a cheater, a whoremonger, a pot-hunter, a borrower a beggar –

Bell: Dear father –

Mat: An old ass, a dog, a churl, a chuff, an usurer, a villain, a moth, a mangy mule, with an old velvet footcloth on his back, sir.

Bell: Oh, me!

Orl: Varlet! For this I’ll hang thee.

Mat: Ha ha, Alas!

Orl: Thou keepest a man here, under my nose –

Mat: Under thy beard.

Orl: As arrant a smell-smock, for an old mutton-monger as thyself.

Mat: No, as yourself.

Matheo and his father-in-law go on insulting each other like this for pages. I don’t know if it ends with them killing each other or making out.

Here’s a modern usage of the term for instructive purposes: Jessica Simpson’s dad talks about her breasts like a mutton monger.

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