Tuesday, 26 July 2005

Regency slang term of the day:
Chosen Pells - Highwaymen who rob in pairs, in the streets and squares of London: to prevent being followed by the sound of their horses shoes on the stones, the shoe them with leather.

Divine Monosyllable of the day:
Cuckoo's Nest

2 comments:

Kate Allan said...

Where are you getting your Regency slang from? (out of interest)

Stephen said...

Kate - They come from Francis Grose's The Vulgar Tongue, (from 1785), J S Farmer and W E Henley's A Dictionary of Slang from 1890 and The Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang which is an abridged version of Eric Partridge's A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. I only use stuff from F&H and Partridge if there is a citation before 1820, except for the Divine Monosyllables, which are not all given citations (but which are all in F&H so are at least 19th Century and mostly much older.