Glossary

Runaway advertisements contain many words peculiar to the eighteenth-century. Even some words that are familiar to modern lexicons,  such as “African” or “collar” contain historical meanings that can escape present-day readers.

This glossary is an introduction to the references to clothing fashions and historical vernacular that appear in the runaway advertisements. Over time and space, spelling varies. The definitions are drawn from several sources. Among those sources: Billy G. Smith and Richard Wotowitcz, Blacks Who Stole Themselves: Advertisement for Runaways in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728-1790; Graham Russell Hodges and Alan Edward Brown, “Pretends to Be Press: Runaway Slave Advertisements from Colonial and Revolutionary New York and New Jersey; Antonio T. Bly, Escaping Bondage: A Documentary History of Runaway Slaves in Eighteenth-Century New England, 1700-1789; Linda Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America; and, the Oxford English Dictionary; and the glossary on the Runaway Slaves in Britain website.

  • African: A person born in the continent of Africa
  • Apprentice: A person bound by legal agreement to serve and employer and learn a handicraft, art, trade, or profession
  • Badge: A metal emblem, tag, or card, most often made of copper, worn by enslaved people working outside of the household working in the city. In addition to functioning as a type of work permit, it permitted enslaved people to move about. Most badges were produced in Charleston, South Carolina between 1800 and the Civil War.
  • Baize: A coarse woolen material with a long nap.
  • Banyon: A banyan was a loose, informal robe to be worn instead of a coat.
  • Bay horse: A reddish brown horse.
  • Bays: Coarse English worsted and woolen fabric.
  • Beaver: The fur of the rodent, used generally in making hats. Can also refer to a heavy woolen cloth like beaver fur. 
  • Binding: A protective covering for the raw edges of fabric.
  • Body coat: A dress coat that was worn relatively close to the body.
  • Bonnet: A hat, usually tied under the chin and often framing the face.
  • Brazier: An individual who manufactures and repairs objects in brass.
  • Breeches: An early form of trousers/pants, stretching from waist to just below the knees.
  • Brevet: A rank in the army, without the appropriate pay.
  • Brig: A vessel with two masts square-rigged like a ship’s fore- and mainmasts, but also carrying a lower fore-and-aft sail with a boom.
  • Brigantine: A small craft rigged for sailing and rowing, speedier and more maneuverable than larger vessels.
  • Broadcloth: A dense, plain, woven cloth, usually made from wool.
  • Brogue: A dialect or regional pronunciation; accent.
  • Buckskin: Leather made from a buck’s skin; may also refer to a thick smooth cotton or woolen cloth.
  • By trade: A servant who has received training in a particular skill.
  • Burdet: Cotton fabric.
  • Calicoe (calico): A heavy, plain, and semi-processed and undyed cotton cloth, used in a variety of eighteenth-century clothing.
  • Callimanco (Calamanco): A glazed linen fabric showing a pattern on one side only; described by some writers as a fashionable woolen material with a fine gloss.
  • Camblet (camlet): Originally an attractive, expensive fabric from Asia, the name later referred to imitations fashioned from different materials. The raw materials for this cloth ranged from camel hair, silk, and velvet to blends of wool and silk.
  • Canoe: A narrow boat propelled by a paddle or paddles.
  • Cap: A simple hat.
  • Casimir: A thin, twilled woolen cloth used for making men’s clothes. From Kashmir, India.
  • Cast: Referring to misaligned eyes, cross-eyed or a squint.
  • Castor: The binomial nomenclature for the North American beaver is Castor canadensis. Castor referred to a hat made of the fur of this animal or imitating the genuine article. As rabbit fur and other substitutes were employed in hat manufacture, the term castor came to be used to distinguish such models from true beaver hats.
  • Chemise: An undergarment usually made of linen or similar fabric and worn by women.
  • Chintz: Callicoe cotton printed or dyed in colors.
  • Chitterling: A frill on the breast of a shirt. Such a frill resembled the mesentery which connects the intestine to the abdominal cavity.
  • Clocks: A name for decorations and ornamentation of expensive stockings.
  • Cloth colored: Of a drab color.
  • Coating: Any material used to make coats.
  • Cockade:  A rosette or knot of ribbon, usually worn on the hat as part of a uniform, as a badge of affiliation, or similar.
  • Collar: Can refer to the collar of an item of clothing, or to a locked iron restraint fixed around the neck as a punishment or to inhibit escape. On occasion in Britain collars were made of more expensive metals like silver and brass, and were intended to advertise the wealth and success of the enslaver.
  • Convict servant: A criminal transported to the Americas as punishment for wrongdoings committed in the Old World.
  • Cooper: The manufacturer of barrels, tubs, pails, piggins, and other containers.
  • Cordwainer: A shoemaker, or worker in leather.
  • Countenance: Facial expression; demeanor.
  • Country born: An enslaved person of African descent born in the Americas.
  • Country marks: Scarification. A form of body modification that signifies multiple meanings among different African ethnic groups.
  • Crape: A thin, transparent, gauzelike fabric, plain woven, without any twill, of highly twisted raw silk or other staple, and mechanically embossed, so as to have a crisped or minutely wrinkled surface.
  • Cravat: A long, narrow piece of cloth worn around the neck, primarily by men.
  • Creole: A person born in the Americas, can be White, Black or mixed race.
  • Cupped: Cupping is the process of placing a heated glass upside down onto the skin over a freshly made cut, in the belief that drawing blood in this manner also drew out infection and illness. This could result in noticeable scars and bruising.
  • Cue (queue): An eighteenth-century hairstyle in which hair hung down behind the head; the hair might be either one’s own or a wig.
  • Damask: Expensive silk, often woven with bright colors and patterns.
  • Dimity: A stout, striped cotton fabric made first in Damietta, used throughout the period for bed coverings and hangings, and sometimes for clothing.
  • Dollar: A Spanish coined currency used throughout the colonial America. After the American Revolution, the dollar would replace the English pound.
  • Dowlas: A coarse sort of hefty linen employed in the fabrication of shirts and smocks.
  • Dropsy: Edema, fluid retention in bodily tissue resulting in swelling, most commonly of the arms and legs.
  • Drugget: Used primarily in work clothes (and for floor and table coverings), this coarse woolen fabric might also consist of wool and silk or wool and linen mixtures.
  • Duck: A strong linen fabric without a twill.
  • Duffel (duffels): A coarse woolen cloth having a thick nap or frieze; used to produce jackets and coats.
  • Duroy: A variety of coarse woolen cloth formerly produced in the west of England—but not synonymous with corduroy.
  • Everlasting: A sturdy woolen material used in clothing, including ladies’ shoes.
  • Fearnothing (fearnought, dreadnought): A heavy woolen material often used during harsh weather abroad vessels at sea as protective outer wear.
  • Felt: A fabric made of wool and hair.
  • Ferret: A narrow ribbon or tape of cotton or silk; used mainly for binding, such as buttonholes.
  • Fife: A kind of  high-pitched flute, often used in military and marching musical groups.
  • Flat: A cargo boat with a flat bottom used in shallow water.
  • French Negro: A Black person, usually enslaved, born or raised in either a French colony or among the French.
  • Frieze: A thick and coarse woolen cloth.
  • Frock: A long gown with loose sleeves.
  • Fustian: A species of cloth, originally made of cotton and flax; later a thick, twilled cotton cloth, used for jackets and outer clothing.
  • Fuzee: An American variant of fusee, a large-headed match for lighting a fire in the wind.
  • Gaol: Variant spelling of jail.
  • Garlix: A sort of linen fabric originally from Gorlitz, Silesia (a historical region that lies mostly within Poland today).
  • Gelding: A castrated animal, particularly a horse.
  • Gilt: Usually specified a metal which covered an object and gave the appearance of gold.
  • Gingham: A kind of cotton or linen cloth, woven of dyed yarn, often in stripes, checks, and other patterns.
  • Gold Coast: The coast of present-day Ghana, and the location of the headquarters of British and Dutch slave-trading in Africa, and the place from which many enslaved people were shipped to the Americas.
  • Great-coat (greatcoat): A topcoat or large, heavy overcoat worn as added protection from the cold.
  • Guinea: An English coin. Minted between 1663 and 1814, a guinea contained one-quarter of an ounce of gold.  It is believed that the name originated from the Guinea region in West Africa from whence the gold was mined. A Guinea came to be worth twenty-one shillings (£1 and 1 shilling).
  • Haberdasher: A dealer in items related to clothing (such as tape, thread, and ribbons).
  • Half joe: A small gold coin, minted in Brazil, and widely circulated in the Americas.
  • Halfthick: A sort of coarse cloth.
  • Heckling: Part of the process of dressing or preparing flax or hemp fibers to be spun.
  • Hempen: Referring to material or cloth made of hemp.
  • High Dutch: An eighteenth-century term for German.
  • Hodden: The coarse woolen cloth produced by country weavers on hand looms.
  • Holland: A linen fabric named after the Netherlands’ province of Holland from which it originated.
  • Homespun: Any cloth made of homespun yarn, also including coarse material of loose weave meant to imitate homemade cloth.
  • Hosier: A maker of or dealer in hose, including socks, stockings, gloves, and underclothing more generally.
  • Hostler: An individual attending to horses at an inn; a stableman, a groom.
  • Igbo: Often Ibo or Eboe, an ethnic group from present-day Nigeria. Many enslaved people in the British Americas came from this African people.
  • Indenture: A deed or agreement by which a person is bound to service.
  • In-kneed: Having the legs bent inwards at the knees.
  • Instant (Inst.): The current calendar month.
  • Jockey cap: A cap with a peaked from and round crown, usually decorated with a ribbon around the crown.
  • Joseph: A lady’s riding habit buttoned down the front. When worn open this garment was popularly called a “flying Josie.”
  • Kersey: A coarse woolen cloth, often ribbed, which originated in Yorkshire, England.
  • Knock-kneed: See “In-kneed.”
  • Last: Shoemakers used these wooden or metal forms shaped like a human foot to produce and restore shoes for their clients.
  • Leggins (leggings): A pair of extra out coverings (usually of leather or cloth), used as a protection for the legs in inclement weather, and commonly reaching from the ankle to the knee, but sometimes higher.
  • Linsey Woolsey (lincey): A coarse linen fabric, later woolen fabric, first made at Linsey in Suffolk, England and very popular in the colonies.
  • Livery: A uniform worn by domestic servants, coachmen and other usually attendants of wealthier people.
  • Logwood: An indigenous American tree, used to produce a dye for textiles creating black, blue, and purple coloring.
  • Low Dutch: Referred to the Germans along the seacoast and the northern and northwestern flatlands, including the Netherlands and Flanders.
  • Lugs: Ear lobes; wattles.
  • Lusty: Healthy.
  • Macaroni: A pejorative description of an 18th century style in which men wore their hair styled with long and elaborate curls.
  • Maltster: A person who makes or deals in malt.
  • Manchester velvet: A fine, dense, and soft cotton fabric made in England and used in making more expensive dresses, jackets and clothing.
  • Mare: A female horse.
  • Marled: Marbled, mottled, spotted or otherwise variegated design on fabric.
  • Match-cloth: A coarsely woven wool often traded by Europeans to Native Americans.
  • Matchcoat: A type of robe prominent among Native Americans, initially consisting of fur skins and later of match-cloth.
  • Milliner: A maker of hats, bonnets, and other headwear.
  • Mulatto (molatto): A person of mixed race, usually African and European, but sometimes South Asian and European
  • Mottled: Fabric marked with spots, patches, blotches, or streaks.
  • Mourning frock or coat: A black or dark item of clothing worn at funerals and when in mourning.
  • Muslin: Lightweight cotton fabrics with a plain weave.
  • Mustee: A person of mixed ancestry. Vernacular for molatto.
  • Nankeen: A simple but sturdy cotton material, initially manufactured in Nanjing, China from a yellow variety of cotton, and commonly featuring solid colors or stripes. 
  • Nap: The raised, fuzzy surface of certain cloths such as velvet.
  • Napt: Any surface that has a nap.
  • Negro cotton: A cheap strong coarse cloth used in making clothes for slaves.
  • Nicanees (niccanee): An inexpensive blue and white striped fabric, originally produced in South and South-East Asia, often issued to enslaved people for clothing.
  • N.B.: The abbreviation for nota bene, which means to mark well and pay particular attention to that which follows.
  • Old Tenor: A nickname for paper currency issued by the Massachusetts Bay colony. In 1751, the colonial assembly ordered that the currency be removed from circulation.
  • Osnaburg (oznaburg, Oznabrig): A coarse linen (later cotton) cloth, used for rough, hard-wearing clothing, often issued to enslaved people.
  • Packer: A packer of goods, or a peddler who carried a pack of goods for sale.
  • Papaw or popaw: A vernacular term for an African captives taken from the Slave Coast, specifically the Kingdom of Dahomey.
  • Pass: A written or printed permit that allowed an enslaved person to move from one place to another. Also known as a of “ticket.”
  • Pea jacket: A stout, short overcoat of coarse woolen cloth, now commonly worn by sailors.
  • Penniston (Penistone): A coarse woolen cloth, made in England, and used for clothing for enslaved people
  • Periauger (Perriauger): A small, flat bottomed vessel. A sailing barge.
  • Periwig: A stylized wig worn by women and then by men as a fashionable headdress.
  • Peruke-maker: A wig-maker.
  • Pettycoat (petticoat): A woman or girl’s skirted undergarment hanging from the waist or shoulders. Worn universally and made of every sort of material.
  • Piece of Eight: The Spanish peso of eight reals.
  • Pinchbeck: An alloy of cheaper metals used for jewelry.
  • Pistoles: Spanish gold coins often used in the specie-poor American colonies. One pistole was equal to slightly more than one Pennsylvania pound during the middle decades of the eighteenth-century.
  • Plaited hair: Hair that has been braided.
  • Plantation marks: Scars and marks resulting from injuries imposed by enslavers upon enslaved bodies, including brand marks, scars from whipping, and mutilation of ears, noses, hands and other parts of the body.
  • Plush: A cloth comprised of silk, cotton, wool, and other materials, alone or in some combination, with a nap longer and softer than velvet.
  • Pock-fretten: “Fret” refers to a wearing away or a decayed spot. Thus, “pock-fretten” described the presence of scars resulting from smallpox.
  • Pomatum: An ointment for the hair or skin.
  • Poplin: A plain woven fabric.
  • Postillion: A person riding and guiding the horses pulling a carriage.
  • Pothook: 1. A hook over a hearth for hanging a pot. 2. An iron shackle with protruding prongs.
  • Poulterer: A dealer in poultry and game.
  • Pound: A form of English currency.
  • Prunella: A strong silk or worsted fabric used for the gowns of lawyers, graduates, and Clergymen.
  • Pumps: A shoe with a thin sole and low heel, often worn by sailors as part of their shore going finery.
  • Ratine (also ratteen): A thick, twilled woolen cloth, generally with a curled nap.
  • Rude: Healthy or good health, as in “rude health.”
  • Ruddy: Of reddish hue or complexion.
  • Russet: A coarse woollen cloth dyed a dark, usually brown color.
  • Russia duck: A fine, imported bleached linen used for summer clothing.
  • Sadler: One who makes or repairs saddles and horse tack.
  • Sagathy (Saggathy): A fine, twilled worsted fabric, for clothing.
  • Scrophules: Scrofulous swellings, an infection of the lymph nodes of the neck causing swelling, often known as “The King’s Evil.”
  • Seton: A thread, piece of tape or similar in a small wound to prevent it healing and allow for drainage.
  • Sartout (surtout): A man’s greatcoat or large overcoat.
  • Sawyer: A worker who cuts logs into structural timbers and boards or firewood.
  • Schooner: A small, sea-going fore-and-aft rigged vessel, originally with only two masts.
  • Scutching: The beating of flax stalks necessary to separate the straw in preparation for hackling. Hemp, cotton, and silk were treated in a similar fashion.
  • Scythe: An agricultural implement for mowing grass or other crops, having a long, thin, curving blade fastened at an angle with the handle and wielded with both hands in a long sweeping stroke.
  • Se’ennight: A shorted form of “seven nights,” i.e. one week.
  • Seersucker: A thin linen or cotton fabric, striped and with a puckered surface, usually made in India.
  •  Serge: A durable twilled woolen cloth, sometimes blended with silk.
  • Shag: A heavy woolen cloth with a long nap.
  • Shalloon: A closely woven woollen fabric, often used for lining of heavier clothing.
  • Shallop (shalloop): 1. A large, heavy boat, fitted with one or more masts and carrying fore-and-aft or lug sails and sometimes furnished with guns; a sloop. 2. A boat propelled by oars or by a sail, for use in shallow waters or as a means of effecting communication between, or landings from, vessels of a large size; a dinghy.
  • Shalloon: A woolen fabric not unlike modern challis and made in Chalons, France.
  • Sheeting: A heavy fabric comprised of cotton or linen, such as is used for bed linen.
  • Shift: A simple piece of underclothing or night wear, usually made from linen, hanging straight from the shoulders.
  • Shilling: English currency: 12 pennies make one shilling, 20 shillings make £1.
  • Shipwright: Someone who makes or repairs boats and ships.
  • Sloop: A small, one-masted, fore-and-aft rigged vessel, differing from a cutter in having a jib-stay and standing bowsprit. Sometimes used as a small ship-of-war, carrying guns on the upper deck only.
  • Squaw: A Native American woman or wife.
  • Snuff colour: The color of snuff, that is, a brownish color.
  • Spanish Negro: A Black person, usually enslaved, born or raised in either a Spanish colony or among the Spanish.
  • Spatterdashes: A kind of legging or gaiter to keep clothing from being spattered with mud when riding.
  • Stroud: Coarse blankets cloth manufactured in England, usually for trade with indigenous Americans.
  • Sorrel: Of a bright chestnut color; reddish-brown.
  • Strum: An African musical instrument, an early form of guitar.
  • Stuff: A piece of clothing that is padded or filled with material.
  • Surat: an East Indian cotton, named for the region in which it originated.
  •  Surly: Bad temperament; an unfriendly disposition.
  • Surtout: A man’s greatcoat or large overcoat.
  • Swanskin: A fine, thick, fleece-like fabric; a kind of flannel.
  • Swarthy: Dark hued or complexioned.
  • Tawny: A shade of brown tinged with yellow.
  •  Teeth filed: Filing of front teeth to sharp points. A beauty mark, and an indication that the person had been born in Africa, as this practice was discontinued in the Americas.
  • Ticket: A pass or permit that allowed slaves to move about.
  •  Thickset: A material possessing a close-grained nap.
  •  Thrumbed: Having a nap or shaggy surface.
  •  Ticklenburg (ticklenburgs): For Tecklenburg, from a town and county of this name is Westphalia, noted for its manufacture of linen; a kind of coarse linen cloth.
  •  Tow: The short fibers of flax or hemp which are separated from the longer ones through heckling.
  • Trepan: To entrap or capture.
  • Trews: A Scottish word for trousers or pants.
  • Ultimo: The last or previous month.
  • Victualler: The owner or operator of an inn or public house providing food.
  • Visage: The face.
  • Virginia-born: An enslaved person of African descent born in the colony of Virginia.
  • Waistcoat: An under jacket or a vest.
  • Waiting-man: One who waited or attended on an employer or official; a personal servant.
  • Watch-coat: A stout coat or cloak worn in inclement weather.
  • Well-set: Strongly built; Compact person
  • Wen: A lump or protuberance of the body; a knot, bunch, wart.
  • West Indian: A native of the Caribbean islands. The West Indies consists of three major physiographic divisions: the Greater Antilles, comprising the islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Puerto Rico; the Lesser Antilles, including the Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, and Grenada; and the isolated island groups of the North American continental shelf, the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, and those of the South American shelf, including Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, Curaçao, and Bonaire. Incidentally, Bermuda, although physiographically not a part of the West Indies, has common historical and cultural ties with the other islands and is often included in definitions of the region.
  • Wharfinger: An owner or keeper of a wharf or dock.
  • Wherry: 1. A light rowing boat used chiefly on rivers to carry passengers and goods. 2. A large boat of the barge kind.
  • Whitney: A heavy coarse stuff used for coats, cloaks, and petticoats.
  • Worsted: Fabrics manufactured from combed long-staple woollen yarn, lightweight with a coarse texture.