After reading this post, singing about a partridge in a pear tree will never be quite the same again... Twelve drummers drumming, Eleven pipers piping, Ten lords a-leaping, Nine ladies dancing, Eight maids a-milking, Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five golden rings, Four calling birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, And a partridge in a pear tree! So they do sing. ... Read More...
Mr Slang
Freud is credited with being the first to state what now seems so obvious: gun = penis. Especially if the animate appendage is in some way inadequate... This is my rifle, this is my gun. One is for fighting, one is for fun. US Military Parade-ground chant (trad.) Slang lacks the empathy gene. And ... Read More...
Christmas is a coming, this is my 100th post, so what could be more apposite than...a few words on Yiddish? Yiddish, sometimes known as Jüdisch -Deutsch (Jewish-German) is the dialect of German spoken by the German or Ashkenazi (Hebrew: ‘German’, i.e. European) Jews. It has been recorded since the 9th-10th centuries, ... Read More...
Sarah Ogilvie's new book on the Oxford English Dictionary, Words of the World, caused a stir recently when the mainstream media reported it as claiming that a former editor, Robert Burchfield, had deliberately purged it of foreign loanwords... Jonathon reads the book and sets the record straight... So my friend publishes ... Read More...
Jonathon introduces Henry Mayhew: contemporary of Dickens, literary phenomenon, pioneer sociologist and hero of slang... The lexicographer records the vocabulary of slang, but, unless their dictionaries also offer citations, they cannot properly record its use. The sources for 19th century slang are widespread but a relatively small proportion of these report ... Read More...
From the Big Apple to a 'Bob Marley and the Wailers' (a BMW), Jonathon looks at man's mania for nicknaming... Nicknames, eh? You gotta laugh. ‘Ali’ Barber, ‘Blanco’ White, ‘Shiner’ Bright, ‘Lackery’ Wood, ‘Queeny’ King, ‘Bodger’ Lees, ‘Ned’ Kelly, ‘Dusty’ Miller, ‘Bogey’ Harris, ‘Happy’ Day, ‘Hooky’ Walker, ‘Tug’ Wilson, ‘Wiggy’ Bennett ... Read More...
The leading lexicographer of slang salutes his predecessor... How embarrassing. There he is. Always has been. Right under my nose. Or at least right behind me. And I never noticed. My very own predecessor: without whom and all that stuff. Really. I had better make amends. Eric Honeywood Partridge was born in ... Read More...
Hurricane Sandy batters the east coast of America, but back here in Blighty slang has a rather down-to-earth relationship with wind... Slang is urban and its lexis draws thereupon, but the elements, linked to nature and thus the world beyond town, are too powerful to be ignored. So slang undoubtedly uses ... Read More...
The poor, as we know, are always with us - and consequently slang is rich indeed when it comes to poverty... Slang, as we should expect, is democratic. It fears not neither does it favour. An equal opportunity employer with the unalloyed fervour of a local council job ad it extends ... Read More...
Judith Flanders is one of the leading historians of the Victorian period - and wrote a guest post on the Dabbler about the invention of detective fiction here. Today, Jonathon reviews her new book The Victorian City, Everyday Life in Dickens’ London... Dickens is 200 this year and no one has ever delineated ... Read More...
