Lost English

by Chris Roberts

  Changing technology often presents problems and opportunities for fiction writers (hardly any novelists have really taken on board the mobile-phone revolution, for example), and the decline of blotting paper removes a handy plot device, for handwriting appears in reverse on blotting paper, allowing the sleuth to make out what has been written by holding the sheet of ‘blotch’ up to a mirror. Another use for blotting paper, originating in the 1960s and still around today, is its impregnation with LSD (the drug, rather than pounds, shillings and pence, LSD q.v.). A dose of the liquid hallucinogenic is dropped on a small piece of blotting paper, which is then swallowed.

  Blue

  A word that will never fall from the language either in its primary meaning as a colour or as a mood descriptor, though Blue Monday is now more famous as a pop song rather than as the Monday before Lent, which people traditionally spent getting very drunk. This is quite pleasing, because the Blue Ribbon Army of the nineteenth century was a band of teetotallers, originally founded in the United States but soon gaining a hold in Britain, to the extent that teetotallers in general were often called by the name, whether or not they were members of the movement. There are, however, several other meanings for blue, from drugs (amphetamines) to a form of underground party, which have vanished as fashions and tastes have altered since the 1960s.

  Going out to a ‘blue show’ had a different meaning again, the word being associated with things that were a bit risqué or even indecent, so plays or revues of a certain kind, obscene language and most especially magazines and films were described as ‘blue’. The origins of this, which go back at least as far as 1864, are a bit unclear, but could derive from legislation (Sumptuary Laws) in the USA regulating personal morals and behaviour that were known as ‘blue laws’. Alternatively, according to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, the idea of ‘blue pictures’ evolved from Chinese brothels, the outsides of which were painted blue. In an amusingly ironic touch, ‘blue books’ can also refer to Parliamentary reports and other official publications put out in folio form with blue covers.

  The use of ‘blue’ in the sense of obscene has become semi-redundant, with ‘porn’ or ‘porno’ replacing it in the context of film and other ‘adult’ material, and it is now rarely used to describe magazines devoted to sex. Fashions in names for these come and go: ‘top-shelf ’, ‘adult’ or, slightly archaically, ‘jazz mag’ are among the rather euphemistic terms for such publications. ‘Stag mag’ has gone almost full circle. Originally used to describe the sort of smutty publications that might be passed around on a stag night, it became a general term for magazines offering pictures of naked women, only, in the twenty-first century, to return to its base; today, an online company has a ‘Stag Mag’ devoted to organizing the best lads’ nights out.

  Bob

  This was a colloquial word for a shilling (twelve old pence, equivalent to five new pence); ten shillings, for instance, was known as ‘half a nicker’ or ‘ten bob’, and £1 10s (£1.50) was often referred to as ‘thirty bob’. A nicker was a pound which, pre-decimalization, contained twenty shillings. The popularity of the ten-bob note (superseded by the fifty-pence coin) gave rise to the phrase ‘as bent as a nine-bob note’ (a denomination that never existed) to describe anything thought to be counterfeit, dodgy or abnormal. On the other hand, the going rate for Boy Scouts (now known just as Scouts) was the extremely honest bob for a job. If they were lucky they might get a two-bob bit or florin (two shillings; ten pence in today’s money). Five shillings was a crown, and therefore two shillings and sixpence, or ‘two bob and a tanner’, was, quite logically, half a crown. With hindsight these terms for money seem much more affectionate than the way it is referred to today, for few modern coins or denominations (rhyming or market slang aside) have pet nicknames.

  Bobby-soxer

  This term originated in 1940s America to describe teenage girls who wore ankle-length (often white) socks with shoes, and it came over to Britain with the crooners that the bobby-soxers admired. They were less a teen tribe, like Britain’s ‘Teddy boys’ of the 1950s, and the term was used more generally by adults to describe young girls who might attend a ‘hop’ (dance) or hang out at a milk bar (q.v.). It appears that the ‘bobby’ part has nothing to do with Bobby Darin or any other singing or matinee idol (q.v.) and instead derives from the shortness of the socks, in the same way that a bobbed haircut is short, which is also the derivation of the ‘bobby pin’ that accompanies such a cut. (The origin of ‘bobby’ in the now extinct nineteenth-century, principally Northern, noun ‘bobby-dazzler’, meaning someone or something remarkable or excellent, is not known.) ‘Bobby-soxer’ could only exist in a more innocent time, describing as it does the kind of impressionable young girl typified by Shirley Temple in the 1947 flick (q.v.) The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.

  Boche

  Originally French slang, from a word for rascal, it was used derogatively to describe Germans from the nineteenth century onwards, France having felt keenly its heavy defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1. It was picked up by British soldiers and civilians in the First World War and was in fairly common usage throughout the twentieth century. Like ‘Hun’, ‘Jerry’ and ‘Fritz’, but not ‘kraut’ (which remains depressingly popular), it fell off in the current century as a term of abuse for German people. Fritz was just a common German name, akin to calling British troops Tommy (q.v.), and Jerry a corruption of ‘German’, while kraut is a shortened form of sauerkraut, the chopped pickled cabbage that Germans were supposed to live on. A likely derivation of Hun, which properly refers to Central Asian peoples, is the association with the Vandals and Huns that ravaged Europe in previous centuries, much as, from the British point of view, German soldiers did in the twentieth. Kipling’s poem ‘For All We Have and Are’, written at the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, contains the line ‘The Hun is at the gate!’, a reference to the German invasion and occupation of Belgium, and which almost certainly popularized the term in Britain. In 1918 Robert Graves, who served in the First World War, published a poem entitled ‘A Dead Boche’, which remains one of the best-known of his war verses.

  Bohemia

  When estate agents start describing areas as ‘bohemian’ in order to increase the value of a property then there is little doubt that meaning has gone missing somewhere. Gentrification through art is now a proven regeneration tactic, but in the past to be a bohemian (thereby adopting a socially unconventional lifestyle) and live in ‘bohemia’ indicated poverty and low status. The link with the area of what is now the Czech Republic known as Bohemia is that in mid-nineteenth-century France bohémien/-enne was used to describe Gypsies, who supposedly came from that region, or who arrived in Western Europe via Bohemia, and thus the term came to be used for poor neighbourhoods. Other inhabitants of those areas (nonconformists, artists and similar) in general became known as bohemians, and so a new meaning was born.

  Conan Doyle often describes Sherlock Holmes as having a bohemian nature partly because of the artistic side of his personality, but more on account of his disregard for social conventions. In the face of changing social mores (many things that distinguished the bohemians of the past, from non-marital sexual relationships to unconventional philosophical beliefs, often caused moral outrage), the word has slipped its moorings. Mention is still made of ‘bobos’ (bourgeois bohemians, a word for the 1990s successors to the yuppies coined by the American writer and journalist David Brooks), but at a time when alternative lifestyles are mainstream and aspirant British prime ministers embrace avant-garde artists, things have moved a long way from George du Maurier’s novel Trilby (published in 1894), the Bloomsbury Set of the early twentieth century or even the Beat generation of the 1950s, each of which celebrated or typified bohemianism.

  The simple fact is that, although the word is still used, and people even retain a grasp of its original meaning, social conditions today have conspired to render the concept, in its older sense, obsolete.

 
; Brick

  (as in ‘You’re a brick, Marjorie, thanks awfully!’)

  The word in this context belongs to another era, one of ginger ale and jolly picnics and topping japes, and a time when children were allowed adventures on their own without the prospect of litigation-happy parents or paedophile-hunting mobs appearing in their wake. The word in this sense really just means a solid, dependable, reliable and good-natured person. The phrase, perhaps oddly, was most often applied to women, yet the origin may be from King Lycurgus of Sparta (c.700–630 BC). When the lack of defensive walls around his city was pointed out, he simply gestured to his soldiers and said, ‘There are Sparta’s walls, and every man is a brick.’

  Obviously this has nothing to do with ‘bricking it’ (to be afraid) or the conformist associations of ‘another brick in the wall’. Another common use of brick is ‘brick outhouse’ (‘as solid as a’ or ‘built like a’, often seen as ‘brick s***house’), which just means a large (usually male) person. Unless of course you follow The Commodores’ 1977 song ‘Brick House’, which eulogized the voluptuous larger woman.

  Brilliantine

  A dressing for men’s hair, usually a scented oil or grease (antimacassar, q.v.). This hair-grooming product (the name derives from the French brillant meaning ‘brilliant’ or ‘shining’) was created in the late nineteenth century by the Parisian perfumer Édouard Pinaud. Consisting of a scented and coloured oily liquid it was intended to soften men’s hair and give a glossy, well-groomed appearance. It was easier to remove and not as heavy as its rivals, the lard- or oil-based pomades (or pomatums), which despite their name’s derivation never smell of apples. These, like Brylcreem, though not brilliantine, have managed to survive into the twenty-first century, with its explosion of gels, mousses and other men’s grooming products that permit a ‘dryer’ look for the hair but are not so good under a hat. In fact, the increase in newer hair-care products and styles is one of the factors in the decline of the traditional bowler-hatted City gent. Two others are the changing demographics of the City workforce in the 1980s, and, crucially, the decision by the Shell Corporation in the 1970s to stop making it compulsory for their sales staff to wear bowlers.

  British warm

  British Army officer’s half-length, double-breasted overcoat, of thick fawn-coloured cloth with leather ‘football’ buttons and epaulettes, a relatively common sight until the 1970s, although originally officially adopted during the First World War. Made by the famous Crombie mill in Scotland, it was not regular issue but was widely accepted as part of an officer’s ‘kit’, for which he would have to pay £5 15s (about £290 today) for one in 1914. The coat was intended to be worn with officers’ service dress of tunic, riding breeches worn with riding boots, and peaked cap, and managed to look smart as well as being warm, practical and incredibly hardwearing. It remained an optional part of British officers’ dress until long after the end of the Second World War; given the two world wars and the fact that conscription into the Army was retained until 1960, it is not surprising that the British warm continued to be a distinctive feature of men’s clothing in civilian life for so many years.

  Brownie

  This was a simple, mass-market roll-film camera first introduced by Kodak in 1900 which, through several different models, remained popular until the 1960s. Among the best-selling of the brand were the ‘box Brownie’ and ‘baby Brownie’. The camera (whose name, like Hoover and Google, became synonymous with the product in general) revolutionized photography by making it cheaply accessible to millions and introduced the concept of the snapshot. The very early ones were made of cardboard, and then bakelite (an early synthetic plastic), before lighter and tougher materials were introduced. In a bid to overcome many professional photographers’ snobbery about the Brownie, the award-winning Picture Post photographer Bert Hardy (1913–95) used a Brownie camera on several assignments. Most famously, he used one to take a shot of a couple of young women sitting on railings in Blackpool in 1951 (yes, that one, with the dress blowing up), which remains among the most recognizable photographic images of any era.

  Buggins’s turn

  Unconsidered and virtually automatic promotion, appointment or selection based on length of service rather than any qualities the favoured person might possess. This might apply equally to something relatively unimportant, such as the order of who goes in to bat during a friendly cricket match, or to positions of some influence within organizations. The earliest recorded use of the expression was by Admiral ‘Jackie’ Fisher (Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone, 1841–1920), who in the early twentieth century wrote of the British Empire going down because of the culture of Buggins’s turn. (The name was probably chosen to represent a typical surname.) Today, in an age that stresses meritocracy, it appears that Buggins has no place, although the Civil Service is often derided for a certain real or imagined reliance upon Buggins’s turn.

  Bully beef

  This term comes from the French for boiled beef – boeuf bouilli – and has been eclipsed by the now much more common ‘corned beef’ (‘corned’ in this case meaning cured with salt); however, both refer to boiled beef compressed and tinned with a small amount of jelly. To many of the men from Britain and the Empire who fought in the First World War it would always be ‘bully beef’ or simply ‘bully’; it also lent its name to a popular cartoon character called Bully Beef, who, with his sidekick Chips, starred in the children’s comic The Dandy from the 1960s to the 1990s. Expressions like ‘That’s bully!’ or ‘Bully for you!’ come from the use of the word to mean excellent, and are now almost extinct. This meaning for ‘bully’ derives from the common noun meaning an aggressive or intimidating person, but which was originally a term of endearment for a person of either sex.

  Capital!

  Exclamation of delight in response to an idea or action of another, a term of high praise that conveys both approbation and congratulation. It might sometimes be preceded by another declining exclamation – ‘I say!’ – to emphasize the general feeling of pleasure and approval. This should not be confused with the triple version – ‘I say! I say! I say!’ – which was traditionally the attention-grabbing prelude to jokes told by comedians in the now equally defunct music halls.

  Char and a wad

  To sit down for a char and a wad simply meant to take a quick break for a sandwich and cup of tea. Heavily used among civilian staff working for the military via the NAAFI (the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes, often irreverently known to servicemen as ‘Never ’Ave Any Fags In’, which supplied canteen and other facilities on British military bases), the phrase was common until the 1970s. Of the two component parts only char (for tea) has survived into the twenty-first century, though it might be amusing to ask for a wad at Prêt a Manger and see what turns up. ‘Wad’ presumably came about because of the wad-like nature of the bread and fillings on offer in service canteens. There is some confusion as to the origins of ‘char’, however, with Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable claiming descent from Hindi cha, while other sources suggest the Chinese tcha, from Mandarin chá, both words for tea. As China was the major tea producer when the drink first became popular in Britain, eclipsing coffee by the end of the eighteenth century, the latter seems more probable.

  It is tempting to see the derivation of ‘charlady’, ‘charwoman’ or just plain ‘char’, meaning someone employed to do housework, especially cleaning, as coming from this either, in her capacity for providing tea for others, or for drinking copious amounts in the course of her cleaning. That would be miles off target, however, as would the idea of any connection with ‘churl’, denoting someone of low rank. Nor does the simplistic derivation from (originally) American ‘chore’ tell the full story. ‘Char’ or ‘chare’ actually comes from an Old English word meaning to turn, as in Charing Cross, a cross placed at a turn or bend in the river Thames. The word dropped out of use in Britain but in America, in its variant ‘chore’, came to mean doing a turn of work and in that form
re-entered mainstream English. Having come all that way it seems a shame that chars have been replaced by having ‘a lady who does’ or ‘a cleaner in’, but the word has acquired slightly demeaning associations and has once again got lost. It is not known whether that had anything to do with the saucy Dorothy Summers playing Mrs Mopp on The Tommy Handley Show (Home Service and Light Programme, q.v.), whose catch phrase was ‘Can I do you now, sir?’

  She would very likely have sat down for a wad later, but equally she may have described her food as ‘grub’, ‘chow’, ‘scran’, ‘snap’, or ‘tucker’, though probably not, as a lady, ‘nosebag’, and certainly not ‘nosh’, which only arrived in 1965. It’s unlikely that many of the above will be used by many people much longer except perhaps ‘tucker’, which the Australians think they invented but which was actually around before their continent was settled. In a Britain where food is now fashionable, with the consequence that there is a greater variety on offer than ever before, the humble wad was always doomed against the wraps, baguettes, triple-deckers or club sandwiches of today.