This week Mr Slang is banished to Gobbler's Knob... We moved last week. Approximately 50 m. One side of the block to the other. So not far but still we moved and it meant a change of address – possibly harder for the recipient to absorb since all that has altered ... Read More...

Mr Slang explains why he finds one particular word to be the most offensive in the English language... Occasionally, when I toss some new offering onto the great heap of the unsold that is publishing (for if every birth is a death postponed, so are mint and shiny first editions merely the ... Read More...

Wallowing once again in humanity's darkest places (in this case France, and a Robert Crumb exhibition), Mr Slang suffers a bout of troubled introspection... Forgive me: I’m pondering work again. I went to an exhibition at Paris’ Musée de l’Art Moderne last week. It was dedicated to the work of Robert Crumb, ... Read More...

This week Mr Slang salutes the man who gave us such terms as Tom, Dick and Harry, tub-thumper and, ahem, buttered bun... ‘I do not love thee Dr Fell The reason why I cannot tell; But this I know and know full well, I do not love thee, Dr Fell.’ The verse we know. The author, probably ... Read More...

Jonathon is away this week, so here's a gem from the archives, in which Mr Slang allows us a glimpse of the curious life of the lexicographer... This is what I do. What I have done for at least 25 years and what I intend to do, audience and body willing ... Read More...

This week Mr Slang writes in praise of Simenon's great detective: "a very French policeman, compounded of French characteristics and set among the most clichéd of French backgrounds"... I am reading Maigret. Tout Maigret, since it is (a) Maigret in his entirety, and (b) in French. I am not showing off, ... Read More...

Jonathon Green continues his series on English linguistic xenophobia with a crack at the Germans - and finds that slang hasn't been quite as unkind to them as you might think... Has anyone seen a Germin band, Germin Band, Germin Band?  I want my Fritz, What plays tiddley bits On the big trombone! Robert Tressell ... Read More...

This week, a hero of slang who showed that size does matter - in this case, the size of your list of terms for the you-know-what... Of the many canards that assail the object of my life’s toil and linguistic affections is that of verbal inadequacy, the mockery by the loquaciously ... Read More...

A ribald, rollicking historical treat for you this week, as Mr Slang brings to vivid life the world of the 'penny gaff' theatres of London... It is impossible to contemplate the ignorance and immorality of so numerous a class as that of the costermongers, without wishing to discover the cause of ... Read More...

Jonathon Green continues his series looking at how English slang has treated those funny foreigners. This week, 'frogs' - but it's not the French... Let us consider the frog. Not as an amphibian but in terms of nationality. This is not, however, the traditional frog, whose consumption by the eponymously nicknamed ... Read More...