Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/652

 538 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 S. IX. DEC. 31, 1921. and his Wife ; Great Exhibition (of 1862) ; I Hair-brushing Machine ; i think I must be ! very Green ; I'm a Young Man from the Country ; i Irish Weddiiig ; Juliana and her Grand Planner ; ' Lord Lovel ; Lost Child ; Lord Bateman ; Mary Jane's Intended ; Miss Miffins the Milliner ; Miss Pringle and her Dog Prim ; Not to be sneezed at ; Organ-grinder's Lament ; Peeping Tom of Coventry ; Peter Potts the Peeler ; Ratcatcher's Daughter ; Robert the Bold ; Susan's Sunday Out ; Sausage Machine ; Skying a Copper ; Stage-struck Hero ; Tim Turpin ; Tragical History of George Barnwell ; Tully- Muckle's Creig ; Taken in and done for ; Villikins and his Dinah ; Wake of Teddy Roe ; Wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Bone ; When I was a Maid, oh then : &c. I shall be pleased to send copies to any in- terested readers. GEO. W. BAILEY. ENGLISH ARMY SLANG AS USED IN THE GREAT WAR. (12 S. ix. 341, 378, 383, 415, 423, 455, 465, 499, 502.) AMONG the specimens which have already appeared are a few illustrations of the use of a stock praenomen with some of the com- monest surnames. This practice did not, of course, begin with the Great War. The following list which I have compiled, chiefly from information sent directly from the front, is probably not at all exhaustive : Tottie Bell, Topper Brown, Sheeny Bryant, Nobby Clark, Dodger Green, Bogey Harris, Wheeler Johnson, Pincher Martin, Spud Murphy, Snip Parsons, Mouchy Reeves, Dinghy Reid, Dusty Rhodes, Buck Taylor, Hooky Walker, Tug Wilson. Of these, Spud Murphy and Dusty Rhodes are pretty obvious, nor does it need a great mental effort to connect Parsons with Snip (via Parsnip), but the .genesis of the others is to SHEMOZZLE, best translated by "a nice how- do-you-do" misfortune is really Yiddish, being a composite word, i.e.,. Schlimm ( German = bad) and Mazal ( Hebrew = star ; with secondary meaning, fortune ; cf. Mazal- Tob, Hebrew = good luck pronounced in Yiddish ki Mazeltoff "). It is really East -End and bookmaking slang a solitary instance, as far as I am aware, of modern English slang being de- rived from Hebrew or Yiddish. In Middle English there is the well-known case of Chaucer using the expression " Rich Gnof " in the ' Canterbury Tales,' which is obviously j derived from the Hebrew Ganev= thief. " Speeler " (Yiddish, Spieler gambler) is American and Colonial slang, but rarely, I believe, used in England. J.- A. G. May I make an observation or two anent your interesting anthology of Army slang ? GTJTSER. This is certainly pre-war. It was and very likely still is the term used by Scots boys for falling flat into the water in place of making a clean dive when swimming. It is remarkable as conveying a most definite meaning with being onomato- poeic in a distinct degree ; and from its effects teste meipso is quite an appropriate synonym for a " knock-out." ROGER. This term for a gas-cylinder", is a case of the contenant for the contenu ; " Roger " has been, time out of mind, the, term used by workmen in bleaching-powder works for chlorine gas, whence the Army adopted it. By the way, why has " Roger " the sinister connotation it possesses in the present case and in the term " Jolly Roger " ? J. J. HUNTER JOHNSTON. SHOW A LEG (pp. 379, 499). When I was a midshipman, 1849-1854, the cry with which we were called in the morning was " Rouse a bit, show a leg there, show a leg ! " H. ST. J. M. I desire to call attention to the fact that many of the slang phrases in the lists in the above numbers are not strictly Army slang, but have been in use in the United States for some time. CANUCKS (p. 383, A). A term for Canadians in use both in Canada and United States for years. CHINKS (p. 344, A). Chinese. COW-JUICE (p. 345, C). Milk. Old American term. DOGS (p. 347, C). " Hot dogs." A name given to Frankfurter sausage. DOPE (p. 347, C). Habitual drug-users are termed " dope fiends," and frequent mention of same is made in the American Press. There is also in use " gave him the dope," which means " inside information." DOUGH (p. 347, C). Slang for money. In use many years. DOUGH-BOY (p. 383, A). This applies to the infantry only. It was used by the other branches of the Service to designate the foot-soldier. It was in use in the Regular U.S. Army (in which I served) during the Civil War, 1861-65. The men had a parody on the song ' Hail to the Chieftain,' which ran ' Hail to the Chieftain who stole the Dough-boy's blanket,' &c. As far as I could learn from veterans of the Mexican War (1846-47), of whom we had quite a number yet in the Service, the phrase
 * me mysterious. ERNEST WEEKLEY.