Saturday, May 24, 2008

Can You Guess?

I've come across a variety of slang words that fooled me as to their date. I'd like to share some of them with you. I wonder how many you can guess correctly? Are they Regency, early Victorian, late Victorian or even 20th-century?
The answers will be at the bottom, so don't look there first!

1. noddle 2. forks 3. gawp 4.four-eyes 5. snooze 6. puppy-love 7.guv 8. toff 9. mate
10. buddy 11. bender 12 pie-eyed 13.whatsit 14.dirt cheap 15. hush money 16. rubbish
17.goner 18. shirty 19. miffed 20 tell it to the marines

Meanings, I hope are not needed. Most of these are still in use today.

Fenella Miller
Debt of Honour Robert Hale - borrow from UK libary or buy from Amazon etc.
Also avilable as download from WWW.regencyreads.com

1.1509 2.1700 3.1682 4.1873 5.1789 6.1830 7.1879 8.1851 9.1380 10.1788 11.1845 12.1904 13.1882 14.1821 15.1709 16.1824 17.1847 18.1846 19.1824 20.1806

1 comment:

Jan Jones said...

Fascinating, Fenella. I would never have put "Tell it to the Marines" as that early. Even knowing now, I think it would pull me out of a story if I read it.