Category: Victorian Slang

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Trump

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

A reprise back to Victorian Slang of the Week and it’s an annoying one.

I spend a lot of time delving into the books and newspapers of the 1930s, it’s one of my favourite periods in many ways. Having just watched the Presidential inauguration, I’m feeling strangely at home with the 1930s vibe. Although “at home’ is the wrong expression – indicating relaxed, comfortable, happy. That’s not how I’m feeling.

So, here we have it, the Trump of the trump card, the one who holds all the trumps. From The Slang Dictionary of 1865.

TRUMP, a good fellow; “a regular TRUMP,” a jolly or good-natured person,- in allusion to a TRUMP card; “TRUMPS may turn up,” i.e., fortune may yet favour me.”

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

I’m noting that this word appears on the same page as Tub-thumping and Trolling.

Ok, so let’s try Donald. There’s no Donald, but there is a Don.

DON, a clever fellow, the opposite of a muff; a person of distinction in his line or walk. At the English Universities, the Masters and Fellows are the DONS. DON is also used as an adjective, “a DON hand at a knife and fork,” i.e. a first rate feeder at a dinner table.

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

Oh, sod off Slang Dictionary.

(Can’t resist pointing out the “opposite to a muff” line before I go, though.)

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Sit-Upons and Sing Small

Ah! I saw “Sit-upons” and thought it meant bottom (bottoms?), but that would be a bit too rude apparently. It’s another word for “trousers” which, in slang terms, were described so shyly that I’m imagining people were only able to silently mouth the word in polite conversation. Much like a certain type of person of the older generation who does the same for the word “lesbian” now.

Some more, almost sarcastically coy, trouser-based slang here – https://skittishlibrary.co.uk/victorian-slang-word-of-the-week-unutterables/

I also love “Sing Small, to lessen one’s boasting, and turn arrogance into humility.” Essentially the 19th century humblebrag.

The-slang-dictionary-sit-upon

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Forty-guts and Forty-foot

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

Two insults today –

Forty-guts, vulgar term for a fat man.

Forty-foot, a derisive appellation for a very short person.

Forty-foot, well, that could used to describe me. There must be something especially amusing about the number forty.

Slang-Dictionary-1865-fortyguts

There’s also another word for toilet on this page –

Forakers, the closet of decency or house of office.- Term used by the boys at Winchester School.

I was looking up the reason for this, and it turns out Forakers is an old word to refer to part of a field, so their original loo was the field behind the school.

Happily through that search, I found this page with two excellent American insults on it – Foozle meaning fool and Fopdoodle, meaning a silly fellow – http://www.christianregency.com/regcant/A_dictionary_of_slang_jargon_cant-ed%20411.pdf

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Norwicher

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

This would cheese Alan Partridge right off. Norwicher – meaning a person who takes more than his fair share. Why the people of Norwich were used for this description is unknown, as the Dictionary says “In what way the term originated, or why Norwich was selected before any other city, I have not been able to discover.”

Other excellent words on this page include Nub, meaning husband and Nuddikin, meaning head.

Slang-Dictionary-1865-norwicher

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Crapping Case

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

Yes, this is just what you’d expect.

Crapping Case, the closet of decency.

Also – Crapped meaning “hanged”.

The Slang Dictionary, 1865
The Slang Dictionary, 1865
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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Cabbagehead

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

More head insults! Cabbagehead – a soft-headed person.

Also, Cabobble – an excellent word from Suffolk meaning to confuse, and it really does sound like a muddled head.

The Slang Dictionary, 1865
The Slang Dictionary, 1865
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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Golopshus

Golopshus – well, this is a word that can be used to describe itself. It’s rather a golupshus word from Norwich meaning splendid, delicious and luscious.

Slang-Dictionary-golopshus

It reminds me more than anything else of the unique wordysmith talents of Professor Stanley Unwin. Here he is describing Patrick Troughton’s era of Doctor Who. Deep joy.

 

 

 

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Funking the Cobbler

Funking the cobbler – a kid’s trick involving the pungent spice asafoetida, also known as Devil’s Dung (nice). The spice was stuffed with cotton into a cow’s horn (everyone had a cow’s horn to hand in the nineteenth century), set alight, and the smoke blown through a keyhole or into the aforementioned cobbler’s stall.

In short, it’s an early kind of stinkbomb, perenially popular with schoolboys. I feel safe in this gender assumption having sat on a fair number of buses that have fallen victim to a gang of lads chucking a stinkbomb on just before the doors close, while we poor saps sit there choking for the rest of the journey. This is especially great if you’re pregnant and your sense of smell has basically become a superpower.

Grrrr! *shakes fist in the manner of an annoyed cobbler*

Slang-Dictionary-funking-the-cobbler

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Fly the Kite

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

If you google it, it seems there are a huge number of meanings for the slang term “Fly the kite”. There’s two on this page of The Slang Dictionary – the first refers to obtaining money on (usually worthless) cheques.

The second is the one that fascinates me, though:
“Fly the kite”, To evacuate from a window – term used in padding-kens, or low lodging houses”

Erm. So your, shall we say, number one is the string and you, up there at the window, are the kite. I presume your average low lodging house wasn’t exactly well equipped with privies, and maybe even chamber pots were too luxurious for these dives?

Slang-Dictionary-1865-flythekite

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Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Tom and Jerry (and Daffy)

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

Tom and Jerry – a slang term that has made its mark, perhaps like no other, throughout popular culture. And one intertwined with The Slang Dictionary itself.

Tom and Jerry are now most famously the cartoon cat and mouse, of course, but the term was also used to refer to British and German soldiers in the Second World War – or the “Tommies” and the “Jerries”. In popular culture, it was the original stage name of Simon and Garfunkel and also the male characters in The Good Life.

But perhaps the phrase originated in 1821 from a journal called Life in London by Pierce Egan, which had a couple of flash characters called Corinthian Tom and Jerry Hawthorn who embarked on laddish sprees around London. They were also accompanied by another friend, Bob Logic, but he’s rather gone by the wayside in slang terms. Life in London ran until 1828 and was hugely popular. There was an offshoot stage show, and even a drink called “Tom and Jerry” devised by Egan to promote the show. This cocktail – a kind of hot eggnog and brandy concoction – is actually still around as a traditional Christmas seasonal drink in parts of the US.

Pierce Egan was also the editor of the 1823 slang dictionary Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. This preceded the slang dictionary I own, which was compiled by John Camden Hotten in 1865.

Corinthian Tom refers to the dictionary in Life in London,

“A kind of cant phraseology is current from one end of the Metropolis to the other, and you will scarcely be able to move a single step, my dear JERRY, without consulting a Slang Dictionary, or having some friend at your elbow to explain the strange expressions which, at every turn, will assail your ear.”

In more intertwining, John Camden Hotten himself brought out a reprint of Life in London in 1869. And by the time he had published his own slang dictionary in 1865, Tom and Jerry meant a lowdown drinking den, a gin palace (probably because these were exactly the types of places frequented by Corianthian Tom and Jerry Hawthorn). And, to add to the cartoony slang, Daffy meant gin.

The Slang Dictionary, 1865
The Slang Dictionary, 1865

Pictures of Life in London can be found on the brilliant Spitalfields Life blog – http://spitalfieldslife.com/2012/03/28/tom-jerrys-life-in-london/