Continuing the list of olde archaic words for your enjoyment and enlightenment:
Duck-shoving - A cabman's phrase. In Melbourne, before the days of the trams, the wagonette-cabs used to run by a time-table from fixed stations at so much a passenger. A cabman who did not wait his turn on the station rank, but touted passengers up and down the street in the neighbourhood of the rank, was called a duck-shover.
Fumbler - An unperforming husband, one that is insufficient: Fumbler's Hall, the place where such are to be put for their nonperformance.
Sal ammoniac - a volatile salt of two kinds. The ancient type was a native salt generated in inns where pilgrims ... used to lodge, who traveling upon camels, urinating in the stables; out of this urine arose a kind of salt, denominated ammoniac. The modern sal ammoniac is entirely factitious, and made in Egypt with soot, a little sea salt, and the urine of cattle.
Grave-merels - It is thought unlucky on the Borders to tread on the graves of unbaptized children ... He who steps on the grave of a stillborn or unbaptized child, subjects himself to the disease of grave-merels. ...There is a remedy for the grave-merels, though not of easy attainment. It lies in the wearing of a sark, thus prepared: The lint must be grown in a field which shall be manured by a farmyard heap that has not been disturbed for forty years. it must be spunby an old Habbitrot, that queen of spinsters, it must be bleached by an honest bleacher, in an honest miller's milldam, and sewed by an honest tailor. On donning this mysterious vestment, the sufferer will at once regain his health and strength.
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