Mr Slang explains why 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...
Language
Jonathon Green continues his remarkable slang tour of London with a stroll down the Dilly, taking care to avoid a dose of the Piccadilly cramp... I’m Gilbert the Filbert, the knut with a k, The pride of Piccadilly, the blasé roué. Oh Hades! the Ladies who leave their wooden huts, For Gilbert the Filbert, ... Read More...
From Nazi Germany to 9/11, Jonathon Green explains why true believers don't use slang... ‘Before [the Al Qaeda training camp] they were joking around and using slang. After the camp the guys were talking jihad, praying and quoting the Koran.’ British jihadist, quoted in Jason Burke The 9/11 Wars (2011) Last Sunday, as ... Read More...
In June 1908 the British magazine The Strand received a submission to its ‘Curiosities’ column from one Mitchell T Lavin of Cincinatti, Ohio. Mr Lavin enclosed a calligraphic representation of the word ‘chump’ which, when turned upside down, still read ‘chump’. He added: “I think it is the only word in ... Read More...
Jonathon Green introduces his favourite collector of slang (and an ancestor of The Dabbler's very own Jon Hotten), John Camden Hotten... SLANG represents that evanescent, vulgar language, ever changing with fashion and taste,...spoken by persons in every grade of life, rich and poor, honest and dishonest...Slang is indulged in from a ... Read More...
From Fu Manchu to Fred Astaire this week, as Jonathon Green continues his slang tour of London by venturing into the East End's Chinatown and the heady scents of opium and white slavery ... It's not so much the slang coinage, because Limehouse as such didn't generate any (other than the rhyming slang ... Read More...
This week Mr Slang settles back into the deep leather armchair in his favourite corner of the club and raises a fourth glass of port to the famous Loamshire regiment, heroes of innumerable imaginary battles... ‘All that remains is the orderly –sergeant’s voice reading orders to the new blood in the ... Read More...
Fired by Jonathan Law’s recent reference to the man, Jonathon Green brings us another Hero of Slang. John Taylor: The Water Poet. Taylor was born in Gloucester in 1578; his father may have been a barber-surgeon. He was educated in the town but abandoned school when he found Latin grammar too challenging. In the ... Read More...
Mr Slang responds to recent events in his own inimitable style... Loo! loo! Lulu! lulu! Loo! loo! Loot! loot! loot! Ow the loot! Bloomin' loot! That's the thing to make the boys git up an’ shoot! It’s the same with dogs an' men, If you'd make ’em come again Clap ’em forward with a Loo! loo! Lulu! ... Read More...
Death-sweats, Paddington spectacles and gallows humour this week, as Jonathon Green continues his slang tour of London with a trip to Tyburn... It is an old place. A crossroads where as we know wicked deeds assemble. It had a marker: Oswulf’s stone, seemingly pre-Roman and which may have been the meeting-place ... Read More...
