Reading and Language 12 Aug 2005 09:55 pm
Regency insults
I was reading Georgette Heyer’s Charity Girl a few weeks ago. I have no idea whether its silly plot made any sense at all, because I was so distracted by the wonderful language.
If you were in one of these novels, here are some things you might call somebody you didn’t like:
skitterbrain, slibberslabber here-and-thereian, scattergood, shuttlehead, gudgeon, noddicock, souse-crown, snivel-nose, muckworm, lobcock, pudding-heart, rabshackle, gull-catcher, looby, sapskull, rake-shame, scaly scrub, hog-grubber, flea-mint.
Incidentally, a “gudgeon” is (among other things) a sculpin, and seems to be Regency-ese for “gullible dork”.
The word “hog-grubber” led me to the 1737 Canting Dictionary, which reports that a hog-grubber is “a close-fisted, narrow soul’d sneaking Fellow.”
on 12 Aug 2005 at 10:12 pm 1.Cam Sculpin said …
Hey, and now I see that the dictionary has been typed in and maintained by Liam Quin, whom I used to talk with in #gimp from time to time back in the day. Neat.
This just in: world remains small.
on 13 Aug 2005 at 11:40 am 2.co149 said …
The “sculpin” I get is “a chiefly marine fish of the northern hemisphere.” Chiefly marine? What is it in its off hours? (Chiefly a hog-grubber, I misdoubt.)
on 19 Aug 2005 at 8:08 am 3.Liam Quin said …
Cool, you found my dictionary page!
:-)
Liam