If a person wearing advertising boards (or a “human advertising medium”) front and back is a “Sandwich” then what other food-based item are they called if the boards enclose them on all four sides? A “Toad in the hole”, of course!
Tag: 1865
“I’m going to see my aunt” was a phrase mostly used by women from around 1850 onwards – meaning to go to the toilet.
This entry can’t bring itself to talk other than entirely in euphemisms though, so instead of WC we get the wonderful “closet of decency” and “house of office”.
On this page, I Also love “My Lord” – a nickname given to a hunchback. And “My nabs” – the phrase “his nibs” still exists but the version referring to yourself is now very obscure.
But “My aunt”, though. What does it mean? Is it this…….?
[If you haven’t seen Curb Your Enthusiasm, this is Not Safe For Work]
So Joey Essex claims to have invented the word “reem”, does he? Well in the 1865 Slang Dictionary here, we have “ream”.
Spelt slightly differently, but meaning “good or genuine” which is pretty much what I imagine TOWIE mean by it. And there’s also “ream bloak” meaning “good man”.
It comes from “rum”, in the days when “rum” meant “good”, before it meant “bad” or “suspect”. Confusing this slang business, sometimes.
Softhorn – a simpleton, a donkey, whose ears, the substitute of horns, are soft.
Rik Mayall died two days ago and it’s just the saddest thing. As a teenager mad about history, comedy and silliness, his turn as Lord Flashheart in Blackadder was just joyous to me.
We were right in the middle of rewatching the wonderful Bottom too, which was reminding me again of just how good an actor he was, both in delivery and in his incredible physicality and endless expressions. As we have watched the Tony Hancock box set recently as well, I suddenly realised just how alike Hancock and Bottom were – the delusions, the pretensions, the acting done half by expression alone. The importance, and lack of, women, TV, money and respect. Bottom is pretty much Hancock in hell.
And so this is my small tribute, an extract from The Slang Dictionary”, 1865.
“Bottom” – endurance to receive a good beating and still fight on.
Farewell sir, you had good bottom.
Oh, The Slang Dictionary. I have so much to post from this Victorian beauty. It’s pretty much an 1865 version of Viz’s Profanisaurus with insults and phrases galore. The Victorians really had a way with words.
Definition of “Tootsies” below. Ha!
I’ve been in Liverpool for 21 years and, until I read this, I’d never heard the term “Dickey Sam” to mean Scouser, but it seems it was the common term up until mid last century – http://virtuallinguist.typepad.com/the_virtual_linguist/2008/10/scousers-and-dicky-sams.html
Nb. “Look, the bulky is dicking!” [no comment]