Dent's Modern Tribes: The Secret Languages of Britain

Tsar, like union baron, is the fictional job title of choice when the real one is too boring or doesn’t adequately convey a newspaper’s editorial prejudices, and there are plenty more phrases that have little or no life outside the pages of a paper, such as shock verdicts, death plunges, love rats, and murder bids.

gongoozling – staring idly into water, or space, as the rest of the world passes by.

flâneur (one who strolls, observes and enjoys),

The British, George Orwell famously noted, ‘are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans’.

‘the new dead-meat market’

While today’s magicians aim to entertain, magic for their predecessors was a far weightier affair. Together with alchemy and astrology, it was held to be an essential part of an all-round education, one component of ‘grammar’ within the ‘trivium’ designed to teach the elite how to learn. Thanks to this system of learning, ‘grammar’ encompassed an e

‘To find a man’s true character,’ P.G. Wodehouse observed, ‘play golf with him.’

Mary, Queen of Scots, who is said to have had a team of ‘cadets’ lift up her long skirts whenever she prepared to tee off. Still, even she ran into a spot of bother herself, when her political enemies accused her of blatant heartlessness for playing a game of golf just hours after the murder of her second husband Lord Darnley.

Inevitably, the black market became awash with gin, and English duly obliged with dozens of euphemisms for tiptoeing around it, including diddle, sweetstuff, tiger’s milk, tittery, royal bob, and needle and pin (mother’s ruin and strip-me-naked, on the other hand, told it exactly like it was).

perhaps it’s just for a laugh. Either way, they don’t sound nearly as funny when they’re read out in court.’