English

Alternative forms

• autum mort, autom mort

Noun

autem mort ‎(plural autem morts)

1. (archaic, slang, cant) A married woman.
   • 1556, Harman, Thomas, A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors,:

     These Autem Mortes be maried wemen, as there be but a fewe: For Autem in their Language is a church, so shee is a wyfe maried at the church, and they be as chaste as a cowe I have, that goeth to bull euery moone, with what bull she careth not.

   • 1641–42, Brome, Richard, A Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars, Act 2:

     The Autum-Mort finds better sport / In bowsing then in nigling.

   • 1834, Ainsworth, William Harrison, Rookwood:

     Morts, autem morts, walking morts, dells, doxies, kinching morts, and their coes, with all the shades and grades of the Canting Crew, were assembled.

2. (idiomatic, archaic, slang, cant) A female beggar with several children hired or borrowed to excite charity.

Synonyms

• (married woman): autem cackler

Hypernyms

• (beggar with children): beggar, see also Wikisaurus:beggar

Related terms

• (married woman): autem cove ‎(“married man”)

References

• Grose, Francis (1788) A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 2nd edition, London: S. Hooper
• Barrère, Albert; Leland, Charles Godfrey (1889) A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant, volume 1, page 54
• Farmer, John Stephen (1890) Slang and Its Analogues, volume 1, page 81