Speak like a Georgian

The 18th century was a golden age of slang, with a phrase for every body and bodily function, from 'fubbs' for curves to 'fizzle' for quiet 'emissions', finds 

- Matthew Dennison

SLANG, suggested spendthrift lexicographer Francis Grose in his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue of 1785, ought to inspire pride in British hearts. Ribald, scatological, inventive, vigorous and witty, slang, he said, was the preserve of a nation without shackles, proof of British 'freedom of thought and speech, arising from... our constitution'. 'Vulgar' it undoubtedly was, 'suiting to the common people', as Dr Johnson defined vulgarity in 1755. Yet slang was more than throaty grossness.

By 1774 and his Dictionary's fourth edition, Johnson had qualified his definition: 'vulgar' also meant 'vernacular' and 'national'. Slang, acclaimed as a byproduct of British free speech, had come of age as a national tongue. For many Britons, it was-as Nathan Bailey had suggested in his popular Dictionarium Britannicum of 1730-the 'true ENGLISH'.

The 18th century can well lay claim to being a golden age of British slang. Pungent, pithy, frequently derogatory terms for every human encounter and bodily function abounded. In Hanoverian Britain, prissiness was restricted to the revivalist preachers, whom slang-merchants ridiculed as 'Amen curlers', or the elderly spinsters they termed 'ape leaders', as unmarried women's punishment after death would be to lead monkeys in hell.