Book of the month: Public School Slang

 

Public School Slang by Morris Marples, published in 1940, is a survey of the way kids at posh schools in England talked. Time magazine in America reviewed it at the time:

 

Wonderful is British school boys’ slang. Derived from Latin, classical literature and centuries of schoolboy gibberish, it is as much a trademark of public (British for private) schools as the old school tie. It is also a clue to the character of British public schoolboys.

Since World War 1, schoolboy slang has been enriched by army expressions (e.g., gadget, posh, to do the dirty, to scrounge, to —wangle’) and by Americanisms (lay off, scram). Most of it, however, is still the schoolboys’ own, often unintelligible to outsiders. A Bootham boy, for example, says: “Just had a juice-meeting with My Lord for tuzhering a bug.” Translation: “I’ve just been reprimanded by the Headmaster for breaking an electric-light bulb.” Some other outlandish schoolboy expressions: belly-go-round (a belt), Medes and Persians (the practice of jumping on a boy in bed), flish (to cane).

Food, especially pudding, inspires British schoolboys to a “peculiarly revolting form of humor” (e.g., maggots-in-milk-rice pudding; cats’ eyes-in-phlegm-sago pudding). For their headmasters they have many names: the Boss, the Chief, the Dox, the Twig, the Pot (also Jerry). A chambermaid is a skivvy, a woman, a hag. Tea, coffee or cocoa is hogwash or pigswill. A boy who studies hard, swots, is treated with the contempt which he deserves. Many and lurid are the names for a new boy: new brat, new squit, new scum, fresh herring. Richest and nastiest is the group of epithets schoolboys apply to townies, the lowest form of animal life, or schoolmates they dislike. Samples: swine, tick, cad, oik, lout, drip, squirt, scug, goof. Townies often retaliate: e.g., their name for schoolboys of Durham University is varsity tits.

Etonians use relatively little slang, get most of it from Latin. Some Etonisms: bumble (small beer with raisins), furk (an illegal football kick), lush (sweets), nant (a swimmer), pec (money-from pe-cunia), Pop (famed Eton society, from popina, a cookshop, where meetings were originally held), sock (eat).

Unrivaled for the richness and variety of its slang is Winchester, whose famed founder, William, of Wykeham (1373), decreed that its boys should talk Latin. Winchester finds it necessary to supply new boys with a glossary of its slang. Some Wykehamisms: abs (absent), chiz (cheat), cud (pretty, from couth, opposite of uncouth), infra-dig (scornful-to sport infra-dig duck, to look scornful), glope (spit), swink (sweat), thoke (idle in bed), ziph (a kind of pig Latin), plant (sock someone with a football).

 

Below are extracts concerning the slang for ‘cane’ – as you can see there are also many other words used for corporal punishment.

The book is available free-of-charge online here.

Public School Slang by Morris Marples, published by Constable & Co. (London) 1940

 

 

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