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Chains of Consequences: The Problem of Incommensurable Slang

This reminds me of my two favorite examples of words or phrases that have changed their meaning. Let's get the really obvious one out of the way:


"'Holmes!' ejaculated Watson."

Which, well, yes.


But my favorite is from The Silver Chair, where young Jill knows she's been set up to be murdered and eaten and has to act like she's happy and ignorant:

"The others admitted afterwards that Jill had been wonderful that day. As soon as the King and the rest of the hunting party had set off, she began making a tour of the whole castle and asking questions, but all in such an innocent, babyish way that no one could suspect her of any secret design. Though her tongue was never still, you could hardly say she talked: she prattled and giggled. She made love to everyone—the grooms, the porters, the housemaids, the ladies-in-waiting, and the elderly giant lords whose hunting days were past. She submitted to being kissed and pawed about by any number of giantesses, many of whom seemed sorry for her and called her "a poor little thing" though none of them explained why. "

If you missed it, it's in the beginning of the fourth sentence and once you've spotted it it changes the meaning of the entire paragraph.
 
"'Holmes!' ejaculated Watson."

From the Latin. Ex (contracted to e-, because of the consonants x and j being adjacent), meaning out, and jacio, I throw. So throw out, throw away. With both a literal meaning and a figurative one, when it comes to speech.

She made love to everyone

Same thing in French, which we would now put as 'courting everyone'.
 
This reminds me of my two favorite examples of words or phrases that have changed their meaning. Let's get the really obvious one out of the way:


"'Holmes!' ejaculated Watson."

Which, well, yes.


But my favorite is from The Silver Chair, where young Jill knows she's been set up to be murdered and eaten and has to act like she's happy and ignorant:

"The others admitted afterwards that Jill had been wonderful that day. As soon as the King and the rest of the hunting party had set off, she began making a tour of the whole castle and asking questions, but all in such an innocent, babyish way that no one could suspect her of any secret design. Though her tongue was never still, you could hardly say she talked: she prattled and giggled. She made love to everyone—the grooms, the porters, the housemaids, the ladies-in-waiting, and the elderly giant lords whose hunting days were past. She submitted to being kissed and pawed about by any number of giantesses, many of whom seemed sorry for her and called her "a poor little thing" though none of them explained why. "

If you missed it, it's in the beginning of the fourth sentence and once you've spotted it it changes the meaning of the entire paragraph.
Make love in that sense also makes a lot of songs from the first half of the 20th century sound far more risqué than they are (whilst the actual risqué parts are often missed today).

"The old slang word scran for food was once universal but has survived only as a regional word in North East England and Scotland."
(Photocaption).

Well, on a point of pedantry, no. It also survives in the Royal Navy.

Gary had to tell me about the regional use, I didn't know it was still in use in any context to be honest. Interesting example of how a term can survive in a close-knit community when it's died out at the centre of the kingdom as fashions are chased.
 
Gary had to tell me about the regional use, I didn't know it was still in use in any context to be honest. Interesting example of how a term can survive in a close-knit community when it's died out at the centre of the kingdom as fashions are chased.
As I commented on @David Flin's Slang yer 'Ook article, we referred to the canteen/dining hall as The Scran throughout my time at secondary school. Even most of the teachers. Dinnerladies thus became Scranna Nannas.
 
As I commented on @David Flin's Slang yer 'Ook article, we referred to the canteen/dining hall as The Scran throughout my time at secondary school. Even most of the teachers. Dinnerladies thus became Scranna Nannas.
The slang term for food I'm most familiar with is 'snap', I don't know how widespread that is outside South Yorks. School lunchboxes are 'snap tins', even if they're made of plastic and have a picture of Manta Force on the side.
 
The most confusing thing about regional slang is that you grow up not knowing that it's regional slang.

There's loads of words I use regularly that I couldn't tell you how local or not the word is.

I've never used Snap for food, like. It was Scran for real food and Ket for Sweets.
 
The most confusing thing about regional slang is that you grow up not knowing that it's regional slang.

There's loads of words I use regularly that I couldn't tell you how local or not the word is.

I've never used Snap for food, like. It was Scran for real food and Ket for Sweets.
Yes absolutely - one of the first science fiction stories I wrote had a pun on 'snap tin' and it never occurred to me that nobody would chortle about this who lived more than 25 miles from Doncaster (probably).
 
The slang term for food I'm most familiar with is 'snap', I don't know how widespread that is outside South Yorks. School lunchboxes are 'snap tins', even if they're made of plastic and have a picture of Manta Force on the side.
My Dad had a friend in Nottinghamshire (not sure exactly where) who talked about his snap tin. Dad, of course, had a bait box. Because Mam made his bait every morning.

The one "this is a dialectic thing, but nobody saying it knows that" thing I remember most strongly is the past tense of the word 'treat'. Growing up, we would spell the word the same, but pronounce it as you would the word 'met'. In countrast with the present tense 'meet'. It was only when doing mock GCSE English exams (which is more in the news than ever) that our teacher realised that none of us realised that this was slang, and the real word is 'treated'.

@Gary Oswald, I got some very funny looks when talking about going to the corner shop for some ket when I moved to the south.
 
My Dad had a friend in Nottinghamshire (not sure exactly) who talked about his snap tin. Dad, of course, had a bait box. Because Mam made his bait every morning.

@Gary Oswald, I got some very funny looks when talking about going to the corner shop for some ket when I mved to the south.
I was going to say, I suspect it's one of those things that probably also applies to northern Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
 
By the way, if you want to look at Hindley's dictionary/guide, go here and Ctrl-F for "KEY TO PERSONS AND PLACES" to bring you to the relevant part. It's interesting to see the roots of some current terms if you look carefully. For example, I assume that this term eventually mutated into the modern 'kecks' for underwear.

Kicksies.—Small clothes, from the appetency of their contents, to the exercise of kicking, and from being the kick—the fashion.—Take my advice, never resist the law, if a man claims your coat and vestcoat, let him have ’em, or you’ll lose your kicksies in trying the argument. And if a man kicks you rub the place, but don’t go to law, that’s my advice.

And this we only use today in the sense of 'stump up funds', I think:

Stumpy.—Money.

And here's the broader sense of 'crack' I mentioned in the article:

Crack.—The fashionable theme. The Go! All the crack! First-rate, as a crack article, an excellent one; crack a bottle, to drink; crack a crib, to break into a house; crack a canister, to break a man’s head; a crack-fencer, one who sells nuts; a crack hand, an adept; in a crack, in a moment; crack a kirk, to break into a church or chapel; crack, horses—men—races—regiments, &c., all first class of their kinds; crack-up, to praise; to crack a whid or wheeze, to make a joke, jokes or witticism; a crack-whip, a good coachman.
Which leads one to the interesting conclusion that people in the 1820s would be well up on the 'cracking open a cold one with the boys' meme of a few years ago.

Note: there is a lot about contemporary boxers (even a list of national champions in another part of the book), because Pierce Egan, the original writer of Life in London, was primarily a boxing commentator/journalist. Also actors and theatres due to it being a history of Life in London's theatrical adaptations.
 
'Crack', as in 'to break into' came to me when I read something about a gifted 'cracksman', who turned out to be into the breaking, entering and purloining of property from the residences of the rich. Whether it comes from 'cracking the house' or 'safe cracking', I'm not sure. Maybe it was Raffles?
 
Gary had to tell me about the regional use, I didn't know it was still in use in any context to be honest. Interesting example of how a term can survive in a close-knit community when it's died out at the centre of the kingdom as fashions are chased.

"close-knit community"

This constitutes a binding sale of North East England to Scotland, where it shall henceforth be known as Greater Berwick.
 
"close-knit community"

This constitutes a binding sale of North East England to Scotland, where it shall henceforth be known as Greater Berwick.
I am slightly confused as to why both England and Scotland disputed Berwick for so long, considering on my one visit there the experience was similar to swimming through liquid nitrogen inside an ice hotel in Antarctica. My mum has been to Siberia and she says it was still colder on the walls of Berwick in January.
 
I am slightly confused as to why both England and Scotland disputed Berwick for so long, considering on my one visit there the experience was similar to swimming through liquid nitrogen inside an ice hotel in Antarctica. My mum has been to Siberia and she says it was still colder on the walls of Berwick in January.

Ah the climate won't be as appealing to those used to the balmy weather of the sub-tropical south.
 
'Crack', as in 'to break into' came to me when I read something about a gifted 'cracksman', who turned out to be into the breaking, entering and purloining of property from the residences of the rich. Whether it comes from 'cracking the house' or 'safe cracking', I'm not sure. Maybe it was Raffles?

"Crac" in French is an onomatopoeia for something breaking apart with a loud noise. From this quite old word, we made "craquer" a verb, for the action of breaking apart, and from there we extended it to someone breaking apart psychologically or in face of opposition all the way back in the early eighteenth century. Then you have "craquer pour" which means 'falling for' somebody or something (presumably in the sense of your defenses melting away) and English may have borrowed from some of those meanings, but it's established that French definitely borrowed "crack" as 'the best one to do something" from English, and we compounded that with "craquer un CD ou un logiciel" for 'breaking into CDs or softwares recently.
 
'Crack', as in 'to break into' came to me when I read something about a gifted 'cracksman', who turned out to be into the breaking, entering and purloining of property from the residences of the rich. Whether it comes from 'cracking the house' or 'safe cracking', I'm not sure. Maybe it was Raffles?
Quite likely to be Raffles, given the first story collection was called The Amateur Cracksman.
 
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