Comments on: Dreams and Liars

By: Gaw

Gaw — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 11:10:17 +0000

I’m not sure the -er suffix never caught on in Cambridge: the inter-college sporting tournaments are referred to as ‘cuppers’ and the people who clean the rooms are called ‘bedders’.

One thing I found strange about Oxbridge slang is why there isn’t an Oxford version of ‘Tab’, the pejorative term for a Cambridge student.

Re sporting nicknames I am fond of the -o suffix. I knew a cricket player, Mark Middleton who was referred to as ‘Middlo’. Then there’s ‘Johnno’ (Martin Johnson). It seems to inhabit the middle ground between the archaic -er and contemporary -y.

By: Worm

Worm — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 08:56:35 +0000

I’m sure my children will probably be enrolled at Westfield Stratford Uni™

By: Susan

Susan — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 22:45:26 +0000

Not wishing to create a slanging match, but how about a post on the other place, Jonathon?

And does anyone have any predictions for future cities of ‘learning and culture’ – Salford, perhaps?

By: Philip Wilkinson

Philip Wilkinson — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:44:52 +0000

Oddly enough, I too was in Oxford yesterday. We probably crossed paths in the Broa – sorry, in Broad Street, along which I walked to the Clarendon Building to renew my Bodleian Library reader’s card. Here I encountered not, perhaps, slang, but a bit of Oxford jargon. Introducing myself in the Bodleian Admissions Office as ‘a member of the university’ who wanted to renew his card, it was quickly established that, as a mere graduate of the university who neither works nor studies there these days, I’m not a ‘member of the university’ tout court, but ‘an inactive member of the university’. This elicited guffaws from a member of staff behind a screen. An ‘inactive member’: what could that possibly imply?

By: John Halliwell

John Halliwell — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:21:05 +0000

Yes, of course. I suppose the most notable of the recent ers was Athers, but he was Cambridge.

By: Mr Slang

Mr Slang — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:37:21 +0000

I would imagine that Johnners was indeed the guilty party. The others are surely too young to have been exposed (in any case Blofeld was at the other place and Aggers wasn’t at either) and even in Johnston’s time the usage was (mercifully) fading.

By: Brit

Brit — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:42:44 +0000

Cricket nicknaming has very much moved from -ers to -y. Recent England sides have been blessed with a surfeit of monosyllabic players who lend themselves to the form. Swanny and Broady leading the bowling attack of course, but the batting line-up was surely unprecedentedly monosyllabic: Straussy, Cooky, Trotty and Belly (with only KP, as ever, disrupting things).

By: John Halliwell

John Halliwell — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:35:09 +0000

This is helpful, Jonathon, I now have background as to why Test Match Special commentators Johnston, Agnew and Blofeld are more commonly known as Johnners, Aggers and Blowers. I bet it was the late and lamented Johnners (New College, Oxford) who kicked it off, or kicked it offers. The closest I got to an Oxford college was when I parked illegally down a side street close to the city centre, and a lumbering, dishevelled, traffic warden, whose nickname was probably ‘Roughers,’ said something along the lines of: “Oi, you, shift it, or we’ll put a clamper on it !”