The Victorian Era was a time of miasmic fog, elegant manners, and the criminal classes. The slang of the time was often colourful (to say the least).
I took most of the following list from “A Long Way Home” by Mike Walker (and the rest from “Victorian London” by Liza Picard and my own nautical days), choosing those that were fun and/or largely self-explanatory (so I could potentially use them in my book).
I left out three-quarters of the original words because they were too rude.
Most of these words are from cant, and others are unique to Australia.
All nations – a mix of drinks from unfinished bottles
Avast – stop
Bacon-faced – full-faced
Baked – exhausted
Bark at the moon – to agitate uselessly
Barrel fever – illness caused by excessive drinking
Beef-head – idiot
Belay that – hold on a bit
Bingo – brandy
Bit of red – a soldier
Black arse – kettle
Blashy – rainy weather (Irish)
Blue as a razor – very blue
Blue stocking – learned woman
Bollocks –testicles
Botany Bay – vagina
Chunder – to throw up
To have some guts in one’s brains – knowledgable
Brandy-face – drunkard
Brattery – nursery
Break-teeth words – hard to pronounce words
Gold bridge – easy and attractive way to escape
Broganeer – one with a strong irish accent
Canting crew – criminals
Caper – to be hanged
Cast up one’s accounts – to vomit
Cat-sticks – thin legs
Caterpillar – a soldier
Chalk – to strike someone’s face
Conveyance – a thief
Cove – fellow
Cully – fellow
Swear like a cutter – swear violently
Dangle in the sherrif’s picture frame – to be hanged
Deadly nevergreen – the gallows
Gone to the diet of worms – dead and buried
Dilly – a coach
Dim mort – pretty girl
Dip – pickpocket
Dog booby – an awkward lout
Empty the bag – to tell everything
Enough to make a dog laugh – very funny
Duke of limbs – a tall, awkward fellow
Eternity box – coffin
Step into eternity – hanged
Expended – killed
Fence – receiver of stolen goods
Fiddler’s money – all small change
Flash the gentleman – pretend to be a gentleman
Footpad – thief on foot, mugger
Fork – pick a pocket
Game – plucky
Gammon – nonsense
Gentleman in red – soldier
Glass-eyes – person wearing glasses
Glim – lantern
Groggified – tipsy
Gut-foundered – extremely hungry
Half seas over- half drunk
Hanged look – villainous appearance
To be under hatches – dead
Hog in armour – finely dressed lout
Irrigate – take a drink
Jack ketch – hangman
Jack of legs – very tall person
Jaw-me-down – talkative fellow
King’s Head Inn – Newgate
Knob – an officer
Lappy – drunk
Lift – shoplifting
Light-timbered – weak
Little house – a privy
Make – steal
Monster- huge (as in “The Monster School”)
Red-letter man – a catholic
Repository – jail
Ride as if fetching the midwife – to hurry
Rusty guts – a blunt, surly fellow
School of Venus – a brothel
Scragged – hanged
Shake a leg – wake up/get to work
Shiners – money
Smart as a carrot – very smartly dressed
Snail’s gallop – to move very slowly
Squeak – betray
Swag – shop
Tilter – a small sword
Tommy – lesbian
Whisk – an impertinent fellow
The sad part of discovering such wonderful words is most of them are too startling to work in a book. I cut most of them in editing, because they were simply too distracting. Any vaguely historical book (including medieval-style fantasy) has to find a balance between accurate historical language and comprehensibility to a modern audience. On the up side, some Victorian slang has trickled through to today (“fence” for example) – so that helps.
My advice: always use contractions (I’m, he’s, they’ve, haven’t), never use thees and thous (except in an actual poem – an unfortunate number of fantasy writers use them incorrectly, which is just embarrassing), avoid visual dialects like the plague they are (“‘Ave a good day ya fine chappy, wot wot?” – stick to an occasional verbal tick like “what what” if you must) and of course avoid all modern slang (“My fine fellow, your tale about that strumpet was seriously TMI.”)
I found my own steampunk voice by soaking in books and letters written by real people living in Victorian times – and then just writing what felt natural to me.
Some of the words stayed, however, and I’m glad.
There’s a space for mixing registers (Oh, that wast entirely TMI, my dear fellow) in comedy, but it’s a very fine art, and, as you say, must be done sparingly – it’s the shock value that counts when you do that. It’s entirely unexpected, so it hits hard when you use it. When you use it a lot in the same sequence, it loses its shine.
W: And most importantly, you need to actually know enough to know you’re doing it. (Editors help a LOT because the English language has far too many words in it for one person to know the origins of them all.)
I still love ‘Duke of Limbs’… and most of the ones that you (very, very wisely) left out.
Ben: Yep, the ones I left out were both graphic and memorable. Wow.