The Slang Guide to London: Billingsgate

Jonathon Green returns to his series on London and slang with a visit to the fishwives of Billingsgate... Billingsgate. As in fish. As in Belin’s Gate which may memorialize one Belin, who, according to Charles Dickens Jr’s Dictionary of the Thames (1881) and quoting Geoffrey of Monmouth, was a king and ... Read More...

Here Be Dragons…

... and also bunyips, whangdoodles and snollygosters - it's Mr Slang's guide to monsters... The usual taxonomy of slang is derived from searching themes and is, like much else, dependant on what one did at some earlier, quite possibly ill-worked out and at all too premature a stage. The childhood, as ... Read More...

Dreams and Liars

Jonathon is amongst the dreaming spires this week, as he considers Oxfordian slang... I was in Oxford yesterday. Waiting for my train home I noticed that the marketing boys and girls have been in and that the old place is now labelled the city of ‘learning and culture’ which is I ... Read More...

Snow Job

The snow is falling in Paris and Jonathon's thoughts turn to cocaine and laundry-theft... The snow has reached Paris and up by the fountain round which the office workers parade their flat-imprisoned chiens morning and night Fifi’s owner is wielding her caninette for which I thank her since the white may ... Read More...

Colourful Language: 1. Yellow Perils

Jonathon starts a new series featuring all the colours of slang by looking at cowardy-cowardy custards, jealous husbands and the yellow peril... A new year, or still thereabouts, so why not a new thread: colour. Rainbow nation slang is not – violets being simply onions or cabbage and indigo briefly plays on ... Read More...

Doggy-Don’t

This week Mr Slang is doin' it doggy-style with one of the counter-language's most well-used animals... Inspired yet again by in-house creativity, to wit Susan’s revelations vis-a-vis ‘Big Dawg’ parfum de chien, I tender slang’s firm hand on the leash. Ah, how we love them: movieland’s Lassie and Rinty, the Famous Five’s ... Read More...

Tempus, Fug it!

As the calendar flips over, Mr Slang's thoughts turn to shysters, splodgers and time's horrid advance... Fugit irreparabile tempus, singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.* Earlier this week the Editors, seeking to place us all – writers and readers both - on intellect’s Parnassus (I first typed ‘top shelf’ but I admit that ... Read More...