Sunday, December 29, 2013

Got the post-Christmas morbs?

First resolution for the new year sorted: campaign to bring some of these Victorian slang terms back into common usage.

"Bags o' mystery" is a brilliantly apt description for sausages, particularly in the wake of the horsemeat scandal; "butter upon bacon" is a much more deliciously earthy variant of "gilding the lily"; "fly rink" is a wonderful description of a bald head; and "jammiest bits of jam" (translation: "absolutely perfect young females") would make everyone sound like Bertie Wooster.

Of course, some terms would be more useful than others. You're not that likely to find yourself downing a glass of neat absinthe, but if you do, be sure to announce beforehand that you're going to "smother a parrot". Admittedly, you might run the risk of people thinking that's a euphemism for wanking, but it's a risk worth taking.

Right, I'm off to powder my hair in pursuit of nanty narking - but before I do so, here are some foreign terms for things, actions and concepts that don't have names in English. Perhaps it says a lot about me that I'd argue the most useful is the German word "Backpfeifengesicht", meaning "a face badly in need of a fist".

(Thanks to Stuart and Tanya respectively for the links.)

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