Right you landlubbers, hoist up your shack-painters and stow away your skillagalee, Mr Slang is setting sail with the King's Navy... Gazing at the illustrations in Emily Brand’s Georgian Bawdyhouse the other week, I came across Rowlandson’s picture ‘Portsmouth Point’ (1814), cropped and captioned with allusions to Jack’s propensity for carousal ... Read More...
Mr Slang
\ This week Jonathon proudly presents CARRY ON BARDING, or, Much Ado About Pistol's Cock, as he looks at Shakespeare and slang; and how the Carry On films might owe more to the Bard than you'd expect... Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Ophelia: No, my lord. Hamlet: I mean, my ... Read More...
An encounter with the man behind the web's 'go-to lexicon' leads Jonathon to wonder whether the very nature of dictionary-making is under threat... Other than in his own adopted third persona, and the occasional reference to Mr Meades who is a friend as well as a minor deity (a fact currently ... Read More...
Jonathon enjoys a new 'tour d’whorison' by a blogger of historical bawdiness... Emily Brand (or Ms B—d as she signs in that manner created by the immortal Tom Brown see Heroes of Slang) is a young historian who writes the blog The Georgian Bawdyhouse, a thesaurus of choice information subtitled ‘an ... Read More...
This week Jonathon Green salutes the author of Fanny Hill, a book with a single aim: 'to write about a whore without using the language that was seen as part of her stock in trade'... It is my intention to review, perhaps next week, Emily Brand’s new study of the Georgian ... Read More...
We are programmed to trust a dictionary, but should we? Jonathon Green - the leading lexicographer of English slang - advises that dictionaries should carry a lexical health warning... Lexicography is about demystifying, of cutting out the fanciful crap and aiming for some kind of truth. This is usually done on ... Read More...
As conjunctivitis and a bewildering array of other eye diseases plague Dabbler Towers, Mr Slang considers the peepers... The five senses do not bulk overlarge in slang. Poets like them and prate accordingly; slang, being of a harder edge, prefers less subtlety. Compared to the vast lists pertaining to matters sexual, ... Read More...
Jonathan Meades - who gave an exclusive interview to The Dabbler earlier this year - has a new book out via Unbound - here, Jonathan Green reviews it... The gathering together of US farming families for the purpose of rolling newly cut logs, so heavy that a single family could not ... Read More...
Slang doesn't really do optimism, but as a one-off special to mark the nation's temporary mood of joy, here's Mr Slang's Alphabet of Admirability... I have eschewed what I term the O-word, but it is over now and I am emerging – decrepitude permitting – from behind my canapé, which is, ... Read More...
This week, a slang lexicographer's delight: the autobiography of a 19th century villain that contains a goldmine of criminal language... Like its standard, literary equivalent, the literature of slang has its canon and its classics. I have mentioned some of the greats – Taylor the Water Poet, George Ade, Surtees, Wodehouse ... Read More...
