Wordplay

The year 1811 was "business as normal" for Britain.

There was a mad monarch on the throne, George III.

War was being enacted simultaneously against the French, Sweden, Russia and Denmark.

A population surge saw a increase to just over 10 million.

There were rebellions by labourers who feared the onset of mechanisation and urbanisation.

In artistic and literary terms this was a halcyon age with Jane Austen publishing her "Sense and Sensibility".

In the same year the Lexicographer, Francis Grose and others published the both acclaimed and shunned work entitled "Lexicon Balatronicum", a meticulously researched dictionary of slang, street-talk and downright bawdy and rude language.

It had been compiled from interviews in ale houses, brothels, courts, police stations, jails and many other haunts and hideouts of what we today refer to as the underclass, although in early 19th Century England they represented the common, ordinary citizen.

If you get a chance to read the full text then do so as I have only selected 26 entries in a basic alphabetical order.

I apologise to those in the process of learning English as a second Language for the liberties I have taken but if you look closely you will see the beauty of the spoken word before political correctness and blandness crept in.

Admiral of the Narrow Seas- one who from drunkeness vomits into the lap of the person sitting opposite.

Bawbels- a Mans Testacles

Blanket Hornpipe- the amorous congress, ie love making

Carry Witchet- a riddle

Darkmans Budge- someone who enters a house and lets others in for criminal purpose

Earth Bath- a grave

Famgrasp- shake hands

Galimaufrey- a meal made from scraps in the food cupboard

Hobbledygee- a pace between walk and run

India Wipe- a silk handkerchief

Jubber the Kubber- a deception involving attaching lights to a horse to lure ships onto the shore to be looted

Konoblin Rig- to steal coal from a coal shed

Little Clergyman- a young chimney sweep (in the days when child labour was widespread)

Moon Men- Gypsies or travellers

Nappy Ale- Strong Beer

Olivers Scull- chamber pot, as in portable toilet usually stored under the bed

Pickthank- mischief maker

Queer as Dick's hatband- feeling ill but not sure of the ailment causing it

Rantallion- where the scrotum, when relaxed, is longer than the penis

Shabbaroon- an ill dressed person

Taradiddle- a lie or a fib

Urinal of the Planets- the name for the country of Ireland where it rains a lot

Whiddle- to tell or discover

Xantippe- a scolding wife named after the wife of Socrates

Yaffling- eating

Zounds- an exclamation.