The lost words of English, from conjobble to gollumpus
The English language is the biggest in the world. And it’s getting bigger. We’re forever adding evocative new words and phrases. Last year, for example, the Oxford English Dictionary welcomed “mansplaining”, “hangry” and (in the sense of someone over-sensitive) “snowflake”.
Yet while our language is growing, it’s also shrinking. Older words fall into disuse and lie rusting and forgotten, like verbal penny farthings.
Maybe, though, we should bring some of them back. Recently at a village fête I picked up a battered old copy of a remarkable book. It was called A Dictionary of Historical Slang. And it’s the best 10p I’ve ever spent.
The book was published in 1937 – so if the slang was historical then, it’s positively ancient now. Some of the entries, it’s safe to say, have no chance of revival. Now that the cane is a distant memory, for example, it’s unlikely that anyone will ever again refer to a schoolteacher as a “bum-jerker”.
Other words, however, are timeless in their application. Anyone with teenage offspring can surely find use for the 19th-century term for a sulky person: “purting glumpot”. Or, indeed, for the contemporaneous synonym for sulking: “riding the black donkey”. If your teenager happens to be a boy, may I introduce you to the 18thcentury term for “a large, clumsy, loutish fellow”: “gollumpus”.
I love the late-victorian nickname for a drunkard: “Mr Boozington”. And the obsolete Lancashire name for a pig: “bacon tree”. Not to mention these two old synonyms for “clergyman”: “fire-escape” and “snub-devil”. (I like the idea of “snubbing” the Devil – as if he’s invited you to a dinner party, but you reject him as a social inferior.)
Admittedly some slang terms don’t sound quite as affectionate – or, at least, not to the 21st-century ear. Nowadays, I don’t suppose many tailors would want to be referred to as a “pricklouse” (16th century), or many young sailors as a “poop-ornament” (mid 19th). In the 18th century, it seems, a cobbler was also known as a “snob”, while, believe it or not, a parson was a “ballocks” (“In 1864 the
Officer Commanding the
Straits Fleet always referred to his chaplain as Ballocks”). It gets odder. Around 1900, according to this dictionary, a goodlooking man was said to be “better than a drowned policeman”. Not quite sure what to make of that. Edwardian women must have been very easily impressed.
Honestly, though. There should be a copy of this book in every school. Just flicking through the pages is a history lesson – as well as a testament to the vividness of the English tongue. Eighteenthcentury term for the potato: a “bog-orange” (because so many came from Ireland). Late-victorian term for a pub: a “garglefactory”. In the late 1700s, meanwhile, a lavatory was referred to as “the House of Commons”. The dictionary supplies no explanation. But perhaps it doesn’t need one. Some entries I have my doubts about. Rather than “to discuss”, did anyone really ever use the verb “to conjobble”? (“You’ve been invited to a sleepover on Friday night? Hmm. I shall have to conjobble that with your mother.”)
Other entries, though, are so glorious that I’m determined to believe they’re real. Above all others, my absolute favourite: the verb “to firkytoodle”. Or, as the dictionary solemnly defines it: “To indulge in physically intimate endearments, esp. in those provocative caresses which constitute the normal preliminaries to sexual congress.”
Wonderful. Perhaps even better: a synonym of “firkytoodle”, it says here, was “finkydiddle”.
It’s a curious thing. For some reason we think of the Victorian world as stiff and prudish, and our own world as a free-for-all of sex and vulgarity. Yet this dog-eared old dictionary of forgotten slang – much of it Victorian – is absolutely rammed with the most eye-popping obscenity. Many entries are so blisteringly explicit they would make a Love Island contestant blush. I couldn’t possibly repeat them here. “Firkytoodle” is the furthest I dare venture.
Maybe that’s why these words fell out of use. Nowadays, we’re much too prim and proper.
My four-year-old son is about to have his first day at school. I assumed he’d be nervous. Weirdly, though, he doesn’t seem nervous at all. Instead, I am.
Seriously. My guts are in knots. I’m being gnawed by dread. Is this normal? Does it happen to other parents? It’s bizarre. Maybe it’s like a “sympathy pregnancy”: that thing where men supposedly come down with morning sickness at the same time as their wives. That’s what it is. I’m feeling nervous on my son’s behalf.
Or maybe it’s on my behalf. Yes, let’s be honest: that’s probably it. Deep down, I’m not worried about my son. I’m worried about myself. I’m worried about what the teachers will think of me, as a parent. Because if my son is in any respect deemed unsatisfactory
– in counting, speaking, drawing, doing up his shirt buttons, whatever – whose fault will that be? It’ll be mine. I’ll have failed as a parent. That’s my real fear. That the headmistress will summon me to her office after school, and make me write out 100 times: “I will read more bedtime stories to facilitate my son’s verbal and cognitive development.”
It’s terrifying. It really is. I thought I’d sat my last exam 20 years ago. But no, there’s one more to come. The parenting exam. The biggest test of your life. And I’ve got a horrible feeling that I haven’t done my homework.
Still, maybe I shouldn’t worry. Maybe it’ll all be fine. My son’s a fast learner. All right, so he hasn’t quite got the hang of holding a pen, but he can navigate Netflix completely unaided, and you should see him whizzing through the Ghostbusters game we downloaded to his ipad.
There’s bound to be a GCSE in that.