Slang loves sport, but Mr Slang does not. As he prepares to flee the Olympic-blighted capital, Jonathon fires a parting shot... ‘The Country Squire New Mounted’ The Country Squire to London came, And left behind his dogs and game; Yet finer sport he has in view, And hunts the hare and coney too. T. Rowlandson Pretty ... Read More...
Mr Slang
Following Rio Ferdinand's Twitter troubles, Mr Slang examines the language of supposed race-betrayal... Choc-ice. Haven’t touched one since 1989 myself. Forty-one that very day, as it happened, and, hold on Mr G, just want to check your results. Black forest gateau, tiramisu, death by chocolate...the sweet trolley is as off-limits as ... Read More...
In which Mr Slang takes stroll through Great Wen, calls for Armageddon... Some Lord’s day. I know not which and care less for I have no time for man-made jacks-in-boxes and believe but in a single rule: that after A comes B and thence to C and thus is the tale ... Read More...
Arrogance, duplicitousness, treachery, sexual corruption and the tip-toeing gait of the flamenco dancer - Jonathon Green continues his series on English linguistic xenophobia with a visit to Spain... Sport being a locked room for which I have not the slightest interest in obtaining a key, my only comment vis-à-vis a recent ... Read More...
His soldier Tommy is one of the great English archetypes. But did Kipling invent or merely popularise him? Mr Slang investigates... Kipling, by allusion, has cropped up regularly in these posts. Enough of the oily rags. It is time for the engineer. Yet Kipling is not at first sight a particularly ‘slangy’ ... Read More...
From dark tourism to Dixieland jazz, Jonathon takes us on a trip to the slang's heart of darkness... About ten years ago I went to Auschwitz. This was Auschwitz II, with its iconic ex-Austrian barracks and the that final run of railway tracks, connecting backwards, for this was among the reasons ... Read More...
Mr Slang traces the original Dabbler - a 'babu' conceived by Rudyard Kipling... The lexicographer’s role being not to anticipate but to analyse I was not here for the creation, and am therefore unaware whether or not the quote that provides both rationale and motto for the Dabbler’s daily efflorescence was ... Read More...
Slang is no republican, finds Jonathon Green, but neither does it bend the knee... Sixty years ago it was happening miles away in Treetops which was in Kenya and if the Queen remembers hearing that the rest of her life had just been realigned on new and seemingly infinite rails then ... Read More...
This week Mr Slang discusses family values... I have noticed, may I assume that I am not alone, a new linguistic abomination that must now be listed among the many repellent inventions that have come with the Olympics. For this neologism we can presumably thank the PR company that coined the ... Read More...
Today's hero of slang is "a literary, literate fat man" who loved food and French girls' legs... I can write better than anybody who can write faster than me; and I can write faster than anybody who can write better than me. He should have lived hereafter, but instead, born in that annus ... Read More...
