Lost English

by Chris Roberts

  Shadow and sun for every one,

  As the years roll by.

  The phrase is little known in the United States, although the Oscar Hammerstein/Jerome Kern song ‘The Folks Who Live On The Hill’, from the 1937 movie High, Wide and Handsome, has the line: ‘Darby and Joan who used to be Jack and Jill’. When Peggy Lee came to record the song in 1957, however, the old couple had become ‘Baby and Joe’.

  Although there are many Darby and Joan clubs for elderly couples still in healthy existence in the UK, the phrase’s decline in common usage may have something to do with a general dissatisfaction with simple contentment, rather than with the growth in disdain for the institution of marriage, or with uncertainty about the desirability of long-term relationships. The modern world does seem to militate against long-term relationships, but much more it rails against the quiet life of undemanding pleasures. As a result, we seem to be increasingly encouraged to be dissatisfied with simple pleasures, and must always seek more extreme delights and tick off lists of ‘must do’ things before we die. Those lists never include sitting next to the same person for decades enjoying a cup of tea, shared contentment and a nice garden.

  Dear John (letter)

  There is a great deal of speculation over the choice of the name John for an anonymous or as yet unnamed male, but it seems to have been adopted in the late Middle Ages as a term for a man, and for a number of professions, including those of priest and, later, a policeman. Thus we go from the American John Doe (a US legal term for an unnamed plaintiff in a case, and so, in police work, an unknown male suspect or victim, often a corpse that has yet to be identified) to John Smith (a generic term in English for a typical male citizen, akin to more modern ‘Joe Bloggs’) to a prostitute’s client (a john, a usage that dates from the early 1900s). Since it is probably American in origin, the phrase ‘Dear John’ may have come from a popular American radio show of the 1930s and 1940s entitled Dear John, and which always began with those words, although it is more likely that ‘John’ was used as it is in ‘John Doe’ or ‘John Smith’ – as just a name for your ordinary average man. The term arose, probably among US servicemen, during the Second World War, which, among many other upheavals, wrought havoc on relationships, with more women working and travelling and many men away fighting. This introduced new stresses (and opportunities) that provided great challenges to many couples. The phrase alludes to the beginning of a letter sent by a woman to her husband, lover or boyfriend, detailing her desire to end the relationship. The terse opening greeting, ‘Dear John’, rather than an expected endearment such as ‘Dearest’ or ‘Darling’, would almost certainly have been enough to warn the recipient of the letter’s contents.

  Dekko

  Derived from the Hindi verb dekna meaning to see, by way of dekho!, ‘Look!’ Dekko, or more commonly the phrase ‘Let’s have [or take] a dekko’ was one of the linguistic gifts of the Empire. Hundreds of words bled into mainstream English from the first involvement with India in the seventeenth century. Many of these (pundit, atoll, cot, bandana and curry, for example) referred to specific objects whose meaning has stayed static, while with others (juggernaut, punch and bungalow, originally from the Hindu deity Jagannath, ‘five’ or ‘five kinds of’ in Sanskrit, and the adjective Bengali, respectively), the sense has slipped slightly. Dekko spread from the Colonial Service and into the general population via the military and has fallen from use as other words became more fashionable, and with the disappearance of the colonial and military classes that had popularized it. A similar but not quite as venerable foreign word meaning much the same thing, ‘shufti’ (1940s military slang, from the Arabic for ‘try to see’), has managed to survive longer partly due to its use on a popular TV show, but may also be on the way out.

  Dolly

  An old-style, principally Victorian, wooden washing device used to stir the laundry in a tub to enable better mixing of the soap and water and to agitate the clothes. They came in two sizes – a single-handed version that looked like a sink plunger, having a metal cup drilled with holes at the end of a wooden handle about eighteen inches long, and a much larger one standing a little under three feet high. This consisted of a wooden pole or shaft fitted with a cross-piece at its upper end, with a circular base from the underside of which projected anything from three to six wooden ‘legs’, each about six inches long, so that the whole implement looked something like a cross attached to a small wooden stool. This type of washing dolly looked similar to something once used to torture witches, and certainly women operating the device would have found it an arduous trial. The ‘stool’ end was plunged into a tub of laundry and then twisted using the cross piece to beat and stir the clothes. The washtub was sometimes referred to as a dolly-tub, with zinc models replacing the earlier wooden-barrel types, and acted as a precursor to the washing machine.

  There is a decent case to be made that of all the inventions of the twentieth century, the electric washing machine has saved the most people the most time. Even after indoor plumbing became pretty much universal, washing day was a chore involving heating water, and soaps, and scrubbing (or using a washing board, q.v.), and starches, and mangles to wring out and part-dry the clothes. The wringing-out, of course, came after the heavy work of using the dolly, before hanging the wash out either on a line or, often in rural areas, on hedges of sweet-smelling bushes. New and more effective soaps advertised themselves as saving time, one for Sunlight insisting that ‘unless the wash has been done the Sunlight way your servant’s back will be stiff and lame,’ having been on her feet all day. However, the basic dolly and mangles remained pretty common until well into the last century.

  The stringing together of dolly with another ‘domestic’ word, mop, brought about an entirely different meaning. Dolly mops were inexpensive prostitutes (doxy, q.v.) and the term, which originated in the eighteenth century, was current into the twentieth. It possibly derives from the ancient tradition of Mop Fairs or Mops. These were hiring fairs held each autumn where, according to one theory, people seeking employment would advertise themselves for sale by wearing a tassel or mop occasionally made of specific materials to signify their speciality – so, for example, a shepherd might wear a mop of wool. (Another derivation suggests that a female domestic servant looking for work at one of these fairs would carry a mop or mop head.) ‘Dolly mop’ originally signified a mistress, then a prostitute, but by the late nineteenth century was used to describe an amateur on the game. These were largely drawn from the serving classes, who preferred to earn their money with rather less manual labour than that required by the washing dolly.

  Dolly bird

  This term will never leave our lives entirely as long as there are television screens to fill at Christmas and Carry On films are still considered an acceptable way to fill them. Even so, non-ironic use of the phrase in everyday speech has gone. Either constituent part, ‘doll’ or ‘bird’, is still in use to mean a woman, but other terms to describe attractive, fashionable, but not overly bright, young women have replaced dolly bird. This may not be entirely due to the phrase itself being offensive, or even to changing fashion in words, but rather changing attitudes to the kind of bloke that might use a term like ‘dolly bird’. It is somehow very 1970s, and reeks of cheesecloth shirts, Rod Stewart, Brut aftershave, Double Diamond ale and T-shirts featuring pigs making love under the legend ‘Making bacon’. Quite simply, the expression has lost its cachet, and the bird has flown the fist.

  Domestic

  Like ayah (q.v.) and char (see char and a wad), as well as skivvy and slavey, this slightly demeaning term for a servant who performs menial chores in the home for limited pay has slipped from use. Job titles now tend to be more specific (cleaner or nanny, for example), and the traditional ‘lady who does’ has reinvented herself as a multi-tasking specialist within the household hygiene and allied industries, whereas a ‘domestic’ today just means, in police parlance, some violent aggro (q.v.) between a couple.

  Donkey jacket<
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  Simple, three-buttoned, single-breasted, unlined coat, often with a panel of PVC or other waterproof material over the upper shoulders reaching about a third of the way down the back. Made of rough, thick woollen cloth, it covered the upper half of the body down to about mid thigh. Usually dark blue or black, it was in effect the uniform of working men in heavy industry (and other sectors) at a time when Britain still had heavy industry (the name possibly deriving from the fact that it was these who did all the donkey work). Although donkey jackets could be bought in shops (and were, in large numbers), by far the largest providers were the nationalized industries like steel and coal, as well as the Post Office and the then nationalized railway. These would have a plastic fluorescent high-visibility strip across the shoulders so the wearer could be seen in conditions of poor light, and the large square pockets were useful for storing small tools. Occasionally, as with the safety tabards worn today, the company logo would be printed on the fluorescent strip (except that it wouldn’t have been referred to as a logo then). They were not stylish items but nevertheless they had a certain fashion cachet, a kind of working-class chic, and it was certainly hipper to have one with a fluorescent panel of bright orange, which denoted British Steel, or of white, indicating the NCB (National Coal Board), than a shop-bought one with a standard black panel.

  The decline of donkey jackets has nothing to do with campaigns for the ethical treatment of animals, as no donkeys were involved in the coat’s manufacture. It may, however, be connected to former leader of the British Labour Party, Michael Foot, who was widely reported as wearing a donkey jacket at the Remembrance Day wreath-laying ceremony at the Cenotaph in Whitehall in the early 1980s. There was a good deal of public tut-tutting, especially in the conservative press, at this apparent show of disrespect, but as Foot’s wife pointed out, he was actually wearing an expensive short overcoat that she had chosen for him.

  Doodlebug

  A rather quaint nickname for the V-1 ‘flying bomb’ (the ‘V’ standing for German Vergeltungswaffe, meaning retaliatory or revenge weapon), a primitive guided missile that was fired at London from launch sites in Nazi-occupied France towards the end of the Second World War, beginning in June 1944. The nickname ‘buzz bomb’ or ‘doodlebug’ came from the buzzing sound made by the weapons’ pulse-jet engines, which could be heard from a considerable distance. In essence the forerunner of the cruise missile, the V-1 had a targeting system that caused it to dive after a certain distance had been covered; however, a design fault meant that the sudden dive starved the engine of fuel, causing it to stop. People ran for cover when the buzzing stopped, knowing that they had about fifteen seconds of terrifying silence prior to impact. Some 10,000 V-1s were fired at England, with about one in four reaching its target (chiefly London), killing over 6,000 people, with nearly 18,000 seriously injured. Barrage balloons, traditional anti-aircraft fire and even attempts by fast fighter aircraft to knock the missiles off course met with limited success, and the best approach was direct interception by fighters, whose cannon fire accounted for more than 1,000 V-1s, although by August 1944 technological developments for anti-aircraft guns had greatly increased their success rate.

  Although the V-1 campaign caused considerable alarm among civilians, not everyone was scared. As comedian Paul Merton explained, his family never sheltered during the bombardment because his father had been told that the bomb with their name on it would never be made. Merton added as an afterthought that, ‘Of course, it wasn’t the same for Mr and Mrs Doodlebug next door.’

  Doolally tap

  A form of madness or cabin fever, the term originating in the early twentieth century as a corruption of Deolali, a town about eighty miles north-east of Bombay (now Mumbai). There was a large (British) Indian Army transit camp there which was the final staging post for soldiers waiting to return to Britain (the ‘tap’ part of the phrase comes from the Urdu word for fever or torment). Troops might wait months for the ships to take them home, and found the tedium of unstructured waiting difficult, with many getting into trouble, fighting and generally going off the rails. This condition became known as ‘doolally tap’, later shortened to ‘doolally’ as an adjective meaning anything from eccentric to temporarily insane. While the word doolally is still with us, and is applied to anyone, rather than just soldiers, the full expression vanished from everyday use in the mid-twentieth century.

  Dottle

  A fairly unattractive by-product of pipe smoking which thrifty smokers, including Sherlock Holmes, would sometimes recycle by leaving it to dry out before relighting it, though it was more common to dash out the dottle directly into a fireplace. (The word is from Old English dott, meaning, equally unattractively, the head of a boil; by the late 1500s it had come to mean a lump or clot, and so by extension dottle came to mean a plug for a container.) The decline in real fires and in pipe smoking has led to a drop off in this practice, and consequently to a decline in the use of the word at all. In essence, dottle is the soggy residue of tobacco left at the bottom of the bowl of a pipe which, if not cleared, will sour a fresh fill of tobacco. It is caused by a combination of damp tobacco and saliva from the smoker, who may increase the amount of dottle by puffing too fast.

  Pipe maintenance, including cleaning (to remove a buildup of vaporized oils and other by-products) and sweetening (to clear the after effects of those), is a declining art. In fact, many of the words – and implements – associated with (tobacco) pipe smoking will probably soon be lost to most people. The rituals of smoking will always remain, however, if only through Holmes who, when confronted with a particularly intractable problem, might grade it by the number of pipes he’d have to smoke before solving it. In Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, 007’s boss, the enigmatic M, displays many more of the traditional behaviours of the pipe smoker in using his pipe to disguise or reflect what he is thinking. Not least of these is the dashing of the dottle into a bin when he’s made up his mind.

  Doxy

  An archaic term for a sexually promiscuous woman, possibly from the obsolete Dutch word docke meaning doll. The problem with words like this, such as ‘bint’ (from the Arabic for daughter), ‘baggage’ (beautifully used by Dylan Thomas in Under Milk Wood to describe Lily Smalls) or ‘brass’ (for prostitute or loose woman), is that they sometimes seem to have vanished, only to be picked up and become fashionable again. Film and television writers are particularly guilty of resurrecting odd old terms and putting them in the mouths of their creations to denote a quirkiness of character.

  Slang terms for loose young women are numerous, and doxy, bint and brass are not as harsh as some, while gay (q.v.) in this context has entirely disappeared. In fact, to be dismissed as a painted doxy by an elderly relative might even be seen as an indication of getting something right. In the past, though, ‘painted doxies’ would be advertised by madams in London’s Bankside and, later, Covent Garden, alongside other ‘beauties of all complexions, from the cole-black clyng-fast to the golden lock’d insatiate, from the sleepy ey’d Slug to the lewd Fricatrix.’ (From The Criers and Hawkers of London: Engravings and Drawings by Marcellus Laroon, edited by Sean Shesgreen, 1990; Laroon’s engravings date from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.)

  Dry county

  It is hard to believe that it is only a little over a decade since pubs and off-licences were permitted to open all day on a Sunday. This meant the end of many traditional Sunday activities including the late dash to the ‘offy’ before it closed, the sedate and time-controlled pre-lunch pint, the afternoon lock-in, alongside many other strange activities in which the thirsty had to indulge to get booze on a Sunday. Many parts of the country – notably Scotland, where for many years only ‘bona-fide travellers’ could buy a drink on a Sunday – were once ‘dry’ altogether on the Sabbath, and parts of Wales held firmly to this tradition even beyond the 1995 liberalization of the licensing laws. This led to quite odd social phenomena, such as Conservative and Unionist Clubs having often huge members
hips in predominantly Labour-voting mining areas. The explanation lay in the fact that private membership clubs (and hotel bars) could avoid the Sunday ban on alcohol sales, as could local railways, leading in some places to a surge in use of certain routes on Sundays.

  Egg on your chin

  A polite way of telling a man that his fly zipper or buttons are undone (although women often wear trousers, the expression does not seem to be directed to them). The phrase is one of a number of similar euphemisms, another being ‘stars in the east’, which were used, somewhat genteelly, to draw attention to the problem without mentioning it directly, and probably came about as a way of alerting a man when in mixed company, thus avoiding embarrassing the women present. The female equivalent, to warn that a petticoat is showing below the hemline, is ‘Charlie’s dead’ (appropriately, the name of a restaurant that opened fairly recently in Petticoat Lane, London). It is easy to see why this one fell from favour, because as fashions change showing one’s petticoat (which are no longer widely worn) might be a deliberate statement. The derivation of ‘egg on your chin’ could be that the gentle hint might avoid a person getting egg on their face (serious embarrassment) if they carried on unchecked. There is, however, no connection between ‘Charlie’s dead’ and ‘Queen Anne’s dead’, which is an archaic way of saying that someone is very late with their news (the monarch in question having died in 1714).