Jonathon starts a new series featuring all the colours of slang by looking at cowardy-cowardy custards, jealous husbands and the yellow peril... A new year, or still thereabouts, so why not a new thread: colour. Rainbow nation slang is not – violets being simply onions or cabbage and indigo briefly plays on ... Read More...
Language
This week Mr Slang is doin' it doggy-style with one of the counter-language's most well-used animals... Inspired yet again by in-house creativity, to wit Susan’s revelations vis-a-vis ‘Big Dawg’ parfum de chien, I tender slang’s firm hand on the leash. Ah, how we love them: movieland’s Lassie and Rinty, the Famous Five’s ... Read More...
As the calendar flips over, Mr Slang's thoughts turn to shysters, splodgers and time's horrid advance... Fugit irreparabile tempus, singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.* Earlier this week the Editors, seeking to place us all – writers and readers both - on intellect’s Parnassus (I first typed ‘top shelf’ but I admit that ... Read More...
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...
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 but one week away, and where would a good dabbler be without a spot of wassailing. Before we set off wassailing incorrectly, we thought it prudent to consult Epicurean Luke Honey from The Greasy Spoon Blog to find out what wassailing actually is... Here we come a-wassailing Among the leaves ... 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...
You may have read the excoriating email that retired naval officer, Nick Crews, sent to his three children, complaining of his “bitter disappointment” with their “copulation driven” self-indulgence? Reading this made me want to have a rant of my own on the issue of modern manners – or rather, lack of ... Read More...
