Obsolete English thieves' cant for nighttime or 'the night', used by 16th and 17th century criminal underworld communities to refer to the dark hours when illicit activity was most easily conducted. Part of a rich vocabulary of Elizabethan and Jacobean criminal slang documented in canting dictionaries of the period. 'Darkmans' pairs with 'lightmans' (daytime). Today the word is of purely historical and literary interest, appearing in period crime fiction, academic study of cant, and occasionally in fantasy or historical RPG settings.
They planned to move the stolen goods during the darkmans, when the constables would be least attentive.
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(obsolete, UK, thieves') The night.
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UK and Irish slang — Cockney, Scouse, Geordie, Yorkshire, Glaswegian, Brummie, Welsh, West Country, plus Irish English. Centuries of regional dialects feeding into modern British and Irish street talk.
See all British & Irish slang slang on Slangora.
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