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street language, smut, innuendo, vulgarity, bawdy

A Little Book of Nicknames

by

alternatives for the famous, notorious, and infamous

Have you ever wondered where nicknames come from – or why we use them? You can find out here in this brisk and witty excursion into the stories behind the nicknames of hundreds of famous people, places, and institutions. It’s a combination of nicknames used in sport, politics, public life, and cinema. Strangely enough, showbiz seems not to generate many nicknames amongst its members – though they do better with catchphrases.

A Little Book of Nicknames Entries run from the deeply ironic Action Man (Prince Charles) to the affectionate Zizou (Zinedine Zidane – the French footballer). It’s interesting to see how the popularity of one nickname can lead to the creation of another. For instance … Gazza (Paul Gascoigne – footballer) leads to Hezza (Michael Hezeltine – politician) and even Prezza (John Prescott – politician) the notoriously gauche deputy to Tony Blair (Bambi), who also famously got the nickname two Jags when as the minister for transport he used two executive saloons to drive 300 yards to deliver a speech urging less car use and fuel conservation.

This spirit of linguistic inventiveness it also evident in names and phrases coined from other forms of word play. So Oxford, whose nickname is the city of dreaming spires (a quote from Thyrsis by Matthew Arnold) becomes the city of perspiring dreams, and former liberal leader Paddy Ashdown immediately becomes Paddy Pantsdown when it is revealed he has been having Ugandan discussions with his secretary.

This is a compilation which will be ideal for anyone who wants to catch up with cultural life at street level in the UK and the US. It includes football clubs – the Cottagers (Fullham – not what you might think) the Gunners (Arsenal), and the Blades (Sheffield) – and jazz musicians Earl Hines, Jelly Roll Morton, and Zoot Sims.

It’s written by lexicographer Andrew Delahunty who also produced The Oxford Dictionary of Nicknames. There’s a full set of nicknames for USA states, and he also covers the origins of all those nicknames which are foisted on to people with certain surnames – such as Blanco White, Nobby Clark, and Dixie Dean.

He also includes plenty of gossip about who was whose lover – from silent film star Pola Negri right up to David Beckham – the Goldenballs of the book’s title – according to his wife Posh.

There are one or two etymologies that I think slang experts such as Michael Quinion might dispute – but on the whole most are convincingly sourced. This is one of those reference books which it’s difficult to put down, once you start reading.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Andrew Delahunty, Goldenballs and the Iron Lady: a little book of nicknames, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp.254, ISBN 0198609647

Dictionary of Contemporary Slang

by

street-speak, vulgar language, swearing and obscenities

It’s very difficult for dictionary compilers to keep up with the development of slang. Would you have known what chav and bling meant a year ago – in 2004 that is? But Tony Thorne’s compilation certainly captures most of the new street language that is passing into common usage as I write towards the end of 2005. Of course some of it may not last, but I have the feeling his selection is well-judged.

Dictionary of Contemporary SlangHe offers more than 15,000 definitions, many of the terms drawn from the worlds of drugs, sport, youth culture, and television, as well as traditional slang topics such as sex, money, and bodily functions. He also explains how and when the terms are used, with notes on nuance, tone, and associations. The language items are drawn from Britain, America, and Australia, as well as other English-speaking countries. He gives plenty of examples of usage and cites sources wherever possible.

He defines slang quite persuasively as “language selected for its striking informality”. And of course it’s is a loose enough term to encompass irreverence, vulgarity, new jargon, and obscenity – as well as the coded terms used by minority groups as a sort of secret language.

I was glad to see that he acknowledges one of my favourite sources of contemporary slang – Roger’s Profanisaurus – and cites it as the source for their wonderful synonym for bonkers which seems to still be in general circulation – “He’s gone completely hatstand“.

He also includes Cockney rhyming slang, which is still popular and spawning new variants all the time – although his entry on the now-disgraced Garry Glitter does not illustrate a beverage as other slang dictionaries claim, but a body part – itself a slang term. (I’ll leave you to work that one out.)

And he’s good at keeping dated slang in the lexicon. Probably not many people under forty would know that ‘gams’ is a slang term for shapely legs (on a woman of course) or that it comes from the Old Northern French term gamb – obviously itself closely related to jambe.

He’s also good at noting the mutiple possible meanings of words: fag can be a male homosexual or something you smoke. [Oops! it’s all a linguistic minefield.] So – a typical entry runs as follows, fully explaining the term:

naff adj

tasteless, inferior, shoddy, and unappealing. Naff had existed in working-class slang for at least 40 years by the time it became a vogue word in the later 1970s. It had been used in the jargon of prostitutes to mean nothing or negligible. In the theatrical, criminal and street-trading milieus it meant third-rate or poor quality. The word’s sudden popularity occurred probably because it was seized upon by TV scriptwriters (particularly Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais in the comic series Porridge) as an acceptable euphemism for fuck in such forms as ‘naff-all’ (meaning fuck-all), naffing and naff off. Naff’s ultimate origin, which seems to be 19th century, is nonetheless obscure. It has been claimed that it is a backslang form of fann(y) (in the sense of females sex organs) or an acronym or alteration of a phrase involving the word fuck (‘not a fucking fart’ or similar). Neither etymology is attested (or particularly convincing), and the similarity to NAFFI is probably coincidental-

‘To be naff is to be unstylish, whatever that may mean.’

(The Complete Naff Guide, Bryson, et al, 1983)

A lot of the examples he gives are actually US slang which is passing into UK usage, but he explains the provenance. He includes phrases as well as individual words – as in choke the chicken and smuggling peanuts.

Tony Thorne knows his stuff. There’s no slack here. The language of the street is up front. He doesn’t pretend to the sort of historical depth you get with Eric Partridge, but this is as up-to-date a dictionary of ‘strikingly informal’ contemporary language as you are likely to find.

© Roy Johnson 2007

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Tony Thorne, Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, London: A and C Black, 3rd revised edition, 2006, pp.512, ISBN: 0713675292

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Dictionary of Euphemisms

by

how not to say what you mean

Don’t be fooled by the title. The Dictionary of Euphemisms is much more than a collection of polite expressions. It’s also a detailed inventory of slang, sexual code terms, metaphors, evasiveness, underworld argot, and indecent language. The terms are explained, discussed, illustrated, and commented upon in a witty and it has to be said rather dryly satirical manner. The compiler is a business man who has no truck with fashionable political correctness or weak-kneed liberalism, and he takes a particular interest in the way ‘professions’ avoid speaking plainly of their doings. The obvious topics which invoke euphemism are sex, lavatories, drinking, drugs, crime, and death.

Dictionary of EuphemismsBut the not-so-obvious are commerce, politics, warfare, illness, and ideological belief. He gives an explanation of each term, a note on its origin where appropriate, and an example of its use in print. So much one might expect in a serious work of reference, but it is the additional notes which give the book its zest and resonance.

language swear words
A shortened form of bad language:

I’ll have no man usin’ language i’ my house. (D.Murray, 1886—he was not a Trappist abbot)

In America language arts is educational and sociological jargon for the ability to speak coherently.

He has no hesitation in exposing the evasions in current political correctness: African-descended = black (never used for Egyptians, Moroccans, or Boers). And he’s particularly good at reminding us of the euphemisms of everyday life:

after-shave = perfume for men;
haute cuisine = small portions of expensive food;
family = not pornographic.

He’s not without a witty turn of phrase:

bestseller a book of which the first impression is not remaindered
consultant a senior employee who has been dismissed

and he’s also good at uncovering military euphemism:

deliver to drop an explosive on an enemy
air support a military attack

Linguistically, it’s amazing how one word can be used for completely opposite meanings, and how many different meanings can be squeezed out of a single word – such as do and go.

There are lots of expressions so common you will hardly think of them as euphemisms – such as happen to in the expression ‘if anything should happen to me’ – meaning ‘to die’.

The latest fourth edition has been revised and updated to include recent coinages, there is a thematic index, and quite an interesting bibliography. This is a browser’s treasure trove. I took it on holiday and after a week’s bad weather had only got as far as letter D. It’s a must-have for anyone interested in language and the way it is used in everyday life.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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R.W.Holder, The Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edition 2008, pp.432, ISBN: 0199235171

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Dictionary of Modern Slang

by

street-speak, vulgar language, swearing and obscenities

As the editors say in their introduction to this latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang, ‘A year, to paraphrase Harold Wilson, is a long time in slang’. In fact the principal difficulty in compiling lexical resources of this type is what to leave out – because a great deal of slang is very evanescent. Oxford University Press have the advantage of compiling their dictionaries from the huge ‘Corpus’ of recorded language use which makes up the data base from which their publications are compiled. This is a collection of examples of how the English language is actually being used, drawn from the printed word – from literary novels and specialist journals to everyday newspapers and magazines, and from Hansard to the language of chatrooms, emails, and weblogs. The database contains over two billion words, and expands at the rate of 350 million words a year.

Dictionary of Modern SlangSo this assembly of what’s current has a better chance than most of being directly relevant – though you should remember that in order to qualify for inclusion in a dictionary, words have to be written down, not simply spoken. OUP also stipulate that they have to remain there for some time before they are considered for inclusion in dictionaries

The entries of this compilation run from abso-bloody-lutely and Acapulco gold via manky and meeja to wuss, yuckie, and zonker. As you can perhaps detect from this random selection, it’s rather polite in tone. There’s little of the ribaldry of Roger’s Profanisaurus or the scholarly rigour of Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

There are lots of very dated references such as Ally-Pally (BBC) and Andrew (the navy) which I seriously doubt are in general circulation now – except with people over retirement age. But I was glad to see that it includes rhyming slang, as well as street language from other English-speaking cultures such as America and Australia, so the book could be useful if you’re thinking of emigrating.

There are also some linguistic curios in the form of words for which the etymology is simply not known – such as eighty-six (to refuse to serve someone in a restaurant) and others which just seem genuinely unusual and very entertaining – such as copacetic (outstanding) and gamahuche (cunnilingus or fellatio).

There is a certain respect given to lewd slang. The editors don’t balk at including carpet-muncher and mantee, but these entries are noticeably brief, and ladies in sensible shoes doesn’t get listed. They offer bristols and boobs, but not headlamps or hooters. I also looked in vain for the expressive rack, the amusingly faux-naive front-bottom, and the very well known Ugandan discussions. Entries on some less contentious issues are almost embarrassingly passé – such as goggle box (television) and knuckle sandwich (a punch).

There’s also a thematic index – because many of the terms are drawn from the worlds of drugs, sport, youth culture, and television, as well as traditional slang topics such as sex, money, and bodily functions. I always think that compilations of this kind are quire good fun, but all in all, there’s not much here that your maiden aunt could object to.

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© Roy Johnson 2010

John Ayto and John Simpson, Dictionary of Modern Slang, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (second edition) 2010, pp.408, ISBN: 0199232059

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Dictionary of Nicknames

by

private names for the notorious, famous, and infamous

This specialist Dictionary of Nicknames offers a collection of names associated with historical figures, politicians, sports stars, actors, entertainers, organizations, and places. It also includes nicknames which have become so famous they have eclipsed the real name of the original – such as Botticelli, Tintoretto, and El Greco. A well-coined nickname is supposed to summarise an individual’s reputation, personality, or principal characteristic. And if it’s good, or funny, it will stick.

Dictionary of Nicknames For instance when the ferocious, right-wing, black-haired, English MP Anne Widdecome was lecturing the Labour government from her position in the shadow cabinet, she was given the rather unflattering nickname of Doris Karloff. It stuck, because it seemed so appropriate – even though she is now an Alice-band wearing blonde. And when she said in her turn of her boss Michael Howard, that he ‘had something of the night about him’, it helped to nail his reputation as a political vampire.

Some of the potted biographies which accompany the entries are quite revealing – such as that on America’s Sweetheart (Mary Pickford) who was not only a star but became an astute businesswoman who founded the production company United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, D.W.Griffiths, and her husband Douglas Fairbanks.

Nicknames can be affectionate, approbatory, respectful, scornful, scurrilous, derogatory, or even vitriolic. Some of those listed here are also pretty lame, such as The Blind Poet for John Milton. Others are quite cruel, such as The Great Whore for Anne Boleyn – so named because she failed to produce an heir for Henry VIII, and was alleged to have many lovers.

It’s a dictionary full of pop and media trivia – such as the fact that Bing Crosby got his nickname from reading a comic called The Bingville Bugle which featured a character called Bingo, a boy with large floppy ears.

I think it was a mistake to exclude generic nicknames such as Chalky White and Dusty Miller, because these are of interest. But as compensation, there’s a special appendix of football club nicknames, British army regiments, and US state names.

© Roy Johnson 2006

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Andrew Delahunty, Oxford Dictionary of Nicknames, Oxford: Oxford University Press, new edition 2006, ISBN: 0198609485

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Dictionary of Rhyming Slang

by

rhyming slang explained and brought up to date

Would you know what to do if you were left on your Jack Jones for a day with the saucepan lids? Rhyming slang originated in early nineteenth century London. Everyone knows that apples and pears = ‘stairs’, and whistle and flute = ‘suit’. Here’s how the system works. The rhyming word is the second of a pair, and the connection is not always obvious – as in Derby Kelly = ‘stomach’ (belly). But usage is made more complicated by the fact that it is the first, non-rhyming word which is spoken – so you go up the apples to bed, not the pears. This new Dictionary of Rhyming Slang explains explains all the well-known terms, and many you will never have heard of before.

Dictionary of Rhyming SlangIf that is not complex enough, the inventive and playful strain of rhyming slang is seen in the tendency to transfer via rhyme from the original term to more and more remote associations – as in bottle and glass = ‘bottom’ (arse), which becomes bottle; but that in its turn is rhymed with Aristotle, which is shortened to arris, which then in its turn is rhymed with April in Paris. Are you still with us?

The most commonly used terms in John Ayto’s amusing collection are coined for the perennial slang topics – body parts, sex, the lavatory, crime, drink, gambling, illness, and death. But he also covers such topics as work, sport, and even household objects.

It was once thought that rhyming slang was dying out, but the recent fashion for using celebrity names has proved this not to be true – as in [the now disgraced] Garry Glitter = ‘pint of bitter’, abbreviated to a Garry of course. The alternative might be to order a couple of Britneys (Spears).

All the people whose names have been memorialised in this way are given thumbnail biographies. Thus, the cast immortalising haemorrhoids includes Michael Miles, Nobby Stiles, Valentine Dyall, and Emma Freud.

[It is interesting to see that John Ayto cites Roger’s Profanisaurus Rex amongst his sources of authentic persuasive coinings. If you follow that link, be warned – it’s much stronger stuff.]

Drink does much better than food, rhyming slang is obviously largely the province of the male, and it often embeds itself so deeply into general linguistic usage that we are hardly conscious of it – as in porkies (porky pies) for ‘lies’, and loaf (loaf of bread) for ‘head’.

There’s a big index, so you can easily locate any term you hear but whose meaning you can’t guess (as I couldn’t with balaclava). This is an excellent and certainly bang up-to-date account of what is obviously still a thriving sub-set of English Language.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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John Ayto, Dictionary of Rhyming Slang, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp.309, ISBN: 0198607512

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Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

by

dictionary of twentieth century slang terms

This is basically a cut-down and updated version of Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English which was originally published in 1937 and is now in its eighth edition. This version contains only terms known to have arisen during the twentieth century, and 1,500 new terms have been added – many from the 1980s and 1990s. A lot of the slang terms we think of as recent actually date back as far as the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Grub dates back to the time of Oliver Cromwell, and to knock off comes from the early 18C. The editor Paul Beale has maintained Partridge’s scholarly approach by citing his sources.

Dictionary of Slang & Unconventional EnglishThis gives the reader every reason to feel confident in the definitions and authenticity of what he offers. There’s quite a lot of technical slang from various occupations, and armed forces jargon here – and not a lot of the sexual and bodily function slang you get in something like Roger’s Profanisaurus. In that sense, it’s a broader and polite companion piece to the more scurrilous collections (which are more entertaining).

There’s a huge bibliography of printed sources, and a rather interesting appendix which gives notes on special sub-sets of slang, ranging from bird-watchers to tiddlywinks players, and from backslang to Spanglish and Tombola. It also includes slang from public schools, jazz idioms, and an amazing list of railwaymen’s slang and nicknames.

A typical entry gives the flavour and an idea of the scholarly approach:

floater. A mistake, a faux pas; a moment of embarrassment; university s. (circa 1910), by 1929 (Wodehouse), gen, to the upper and middle classes. Lunn, 1913; Knox, 1934, ‘It produced…in the original and highly esoteric sense of that term, a “floater”.’ Perhaps because it cannot be recalled, though perhaps suggested by faux pas slurred to föper; cf., however, float, v.,2.—2. Esp. in floaters and mash, sausages and mashed potatoes: RAF: since circa 1920.—4. A meat pie in a plate of peas or gravy: Aus.:later C.20. Wilkes.—See:-

floaters. Spots before the eyes: since circa. 1950 or a decade earlier . (Weekend 21 May, 1969.) Also known as flying flies.

Pinning down slang in print is never going to be easy, but having a cheap and accessible version of a classic resource available is very reassuring. Eric Partridge was an independent, a radical, and a one-off – and his publications are well worth keeping alive.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Paul Beale (ed), Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, London: Routledge, 1999, pp.534, ISBN: 0415063523

English Slang

by

the inventiveness of everyday language

In this fairly hefty study of English slang (‘the people’s poetry’ as he calls it) Michael Adams is trying to bridge the gap between an academic study of linguistics and a populist approach to slang that merely lists recent coinages and their explanations or folk etymologies. He’s trying to make clear distinctions between slang, jargon, colloquial, cant, argot, and merely informal expressions – all of which tend to overlap and bleed into each other.

English SlangIt’s not easy, because a word can belong to more than one category, depending on who is using it and the context in which it is being used. People often use both slang and jargon at the same time – and make little distinction between the two linguistic categories. Moreover the meaning of a slang expression may change over time (like any other item of language) and whilst a great deal of slang has a short lifespan, it does not necessarily disappear entirely.

His most serious argument is that slang is not a ‘low vulgar, unmeaning language’ – as it is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Adams claims it is a form of poetry that adds vivacity and pungency to our communication – hence his observation that it is ‘the poetry of everyday life’.

After questions of definition he moves on to consider how it is actually used – in other words, a socio-linguistic approach to the subject. He puts an enormous amount of emphasis on African American slang, almost giving the impression that other groups do not generate slang of their own.

I was interested to note that he skirts round the contentious issue of ‘Ebonics’, but he looks in some detail at the issue of slang and gender. Yes, women do use slang as much as men – particularly if you take into account the use of conversational tags such as innit and thingy.

I’m afraid that this also leads into an extended consideration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other television shows, where he talks about Buffy and Homer Simpson as if they were real living Americans. He doesn’t seem to take into account that much of the linguistic inventiveness of these characters is the product of largely white middle-class script writers – though it has to be said for their inventiveness that some of the terms they create do pass into everyday use by ordinary human beings.

There’s a whole chapter devoted to the aesthetics of slang, including a scholarly analysis of rhetorical devices such as tmesis (infixing, as in absofuckinglutely) and diacope (as in shut the fuck up) But the problem is that he unpicks his illustrative examples in exhausting detail and then repeats his explanations and bon mots until they are drained of value.

Michael Adams is obviously very knowledgeable on the subject, but I suspect that his approach might be too scholarly for the average reader and not scholarly enough for specialists. But the book got rave reviews when it first appeared in America, so so there’s no reason it won’t do well in the UK.

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© Roy Johnson 2012

Michael Adams, Slang: The People’s Poetry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp.238, ISBN: 0199913773

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Filthy English

by

The How, Why, When, and What of Everyday Swearing

Dictionaries of slang and obscenity are often disappointing, because they define terms but shy away from discussing exactly how they are used in everyday life. Filthy English does the opposite. Peter Silverton not only tells you what swear words mean, but he illustrates and analyses their use in the very places for which they are designed – the street, the pub, the argument, the curse, and the insult. His analysis of swearing is delivered via an account of his own relation to language in 1950s UK and beyond.

Filthy English The story goes down endless numbers of digressions – but fortunately he has an amusing and lively style, full of witty asides and one-liners. (“People from Maidenhead never laugh when telling you where they live”) This personal history spreads out into a very well-informed history of the words he is considering. But the humour is underpinned by a very scholarly sense of etymology.

He follows the well-worn tradition of presenting his observations in cod-serious, satirically po-faced categories: Chapter One – ‘Sexual intercourse and Masturbation’; Chapter Two – ‘Anuses, Faeces, Urine, and Other Excreta’. This makes what he has to say all the funnier.

He has a finely attuned ear for the subtleties of language, and spends a number of pages discussing the fine distinctions between calling someone a wanker or a tosser – despite the fact that the words appear to mean the same thing. He brings a sociological as well as an etymological knowledge to his analysis

What also makes this approach so attractive is that he is steeped in the popular culture of the last forty or fifty years in Britain. He recaptures some of its pivotal linguistic moments in vividly entertaining anecdotes from the world of television, sport, pop music, and political life.

He also considers very carefully the shock value or taboo-quotient on well known swear words (or swears as he calls them) as well as pointing to absurdities such as the fact that many people would find “Bugger that!” (anal intercourse) far less offensive than “Fuck that!” (normal sexual intercourse). This is matched by his intelligent sense of the history of language change and development:

Once we were a religious society and ‘damn’ was the word that could tear into our social and emotional fabric. As the Enlightenment edged religion aside, so sexuality became the locus of swear-power – fuck starting its rise in the nineteenth century, followed by cunt in the second half of the twentieth. Now it’s the nouns and epithets of group identity that are taking over – race words mostly, but also ones about religion and class.

It’s quite surprising how rapidly the meaning of a word can change. Spunk was originally the name for touch-wood, the stuff people carried round for starting fires. Then from the eighteenth century onwards it meant courage or bravery:

It was only in the late nineteenth century that the possession of those qualities came to be transferred to the quintessentially liquid expression of masculinity. It’s an intriguing psychological correlation: heroism and the vector of male DNA transmission. Jamaicans call it man juice.

He’s amazingly well informed on swearing in a number of languages from all over the world – which serves well to demonstrate the universality of the phenomenon. And he includes ‘hidden’ languages such as ‘mother-in-law languages’ (a form of avoidance speech) and the Russian unofficial language Mat (older than Russian language itself) which is based upon only four or five words and their infinite variations.

I was also glad to see that he’s smack up to date. In his discussion of the term ‘gay’ he notes that it’s rapidly becoming a general term of gentle teasing, in addition to its conventional use as a synonym for homosexual. One man invites his male friend out for a drink, only to be told he’s tired and wants to stay in. “Don’t be so gay” might be the response.

He finishes with a bravura excursion into psycho-analysis, where with an examination of what Freud and Ferenczi had to say about forbidden language adds up to the fact that these swear words are deeply attached to the most important parts of our bodies. People with Tourette’s Syndrome don’t shout out “Ankles! Shoulders! Opposite sex!”. They shout “Cock! Cunt! Fuck!”

For anyone interested in demotic language, this is a must. Silverton is entertaining from first page to last – and his apercus are backed up with erudition, scholarship, but more importantly with a healthy engagement with the language of everyday life on the streets of the UK and the rest of the world today.

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© Roy Johnson 2011

Peter Silverton, Filthy English: The How, Why, When, and What of Everyday Swearing, London: Portobello Books, 2010, pp.314, ISBN: 184627169X

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Pardon My French

by

Unleash your inner Gaul

Don’t be misled by the title. This book isn’t about swearing or euphemism. It comes from the long tradition of the English writing about French language and culture as if it were that of another planet – but with a certain amount of self-deprecation and lots of affection. Charles Timoney went to live in France speaking only a few remnants of his GCE French – and what he offers here is what he’s learned in the years since – working in the country and learning from his French wife and in-laws. You can avoid making the same mistakes, and even get to understand some of the slang, idioms, and puzzling anomalies which he writes about so amusingly.

Pardon My FrenchThe entries are arranged in themes such as food and drink, travel, education, the office, history, slang, and the family. What you get is not only an explanation of linguistic oddities, but an insider’s glimpse into a foreign culture too. He explains how to survive in a French restaurant for instance, how to order steak well done and even ask for tap water, and why you should not call the waiter ‘Monsieur’.

There are also warnings that gateau doesn’t always mean cake (more likely a biscuit) and how French vegetable names are used as slang insults (Banane = idiot)

Because the French (like the English) have a habit of changing and abbreviating words, this guide is useful for explaining the quasi-slang terms for everyday things – such as apéro (aperitif) DOM – TOM (former colonies) Bac (A levels). He also explains why people in the provinces refer not to Parisiens but to les neufs trois (ninety-three being the number of a particularly low-rated parisian département).

He explains why nobody in their right mind would use the full name L’aéroport Charles de Gaulle when they can more easily use it’s original name of Roissy.

Buried within all the jokes there’s actually a lot of useful information regarding French culture such as getting married, driving round roundabouts, where to sit in a football stadium, and the fact that French cinemas change their films on a Wednesday, not Thursday as they do in the UK.

There’s an excellent chapter on slang (Mec = chap) backslang (Meuf = girl) and even instructions on how to use Merde! politely. It’s the sort of book you read with a permanent smile on your face.

© Roy Johnson 2007

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Charles Timoney, Pardon My French, London: Penguin, 2007, pp.233, ISBN: 1846140528

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