Choose Your Words Carefully in Quotes 10

The way the Glaswegian writer speaks is largely down to his mother. She was a proud woman who insisted that he spoke the Queen’s English. “She thought regional accents would hold back your kids; that if you wanted to do well you had to talk like a BBC newscaster. So as a kid I just sounded a bit weirder than the kids around me.” (Guardian 2022-04-03, Douglas Stewart, author of Shuggy Bain)

When I joined the BBC in 1979, it was still very rare for a national newsreader to have a regional accent, and the first time I was interviewed for BBC Radio Stoke, the first question asked was “How can a person from Stoke on Trent (with heavy emphasis) get to be head of the BBC’s Pronunciation Unit?”... The British accents that regularly come bottom of the polls... are mostly those of industrial cities: Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow. Is the dislike caused by a perceived ugliness in the sound, or is it rather the fact that outsiders... still associate the Black Country, Merseyside, Glasgow and the East End of London with slums and ‘dark Satanic mills’? (Graham)

In the 1950s as my national (military) service was coming to an end, I needed an early release in order to start my first university term in time. I needed the Commanding Officer’s signature. He exploded into a raging fury I’ve never experienced elsewhere. “University? You can’t even speak English”. I grew up in Kent. My accent is still the same today... Like all emigrés I’m a fossil from the time I left, with 1950s slang and 1950s anything else. (Sidney Wood from Kent, who says he first heard RP from RAF officers. Fascinating discussion here.) 

An audience member quit a performance of a Shakespeare play in York because it featured Yorkshire accents, theatre staff have said. York Theatre Royal's staging of As You Like It prompted a complaint on Monday, with the theatregoer asking for a refund due to the accents being used. The Yorkshire-based company behind the show said its performances contained "unapologetic northern voices". "That's Yorkshire accents, right here in Yorkshire," the theatre's boss said. (BBC)

A while back, the CEO of a large company asked me to talk to her senior managers about the difference between marketing and marketing comms. I did a presentation for an hour, then a Q&A for half-an-hour. It seemed to go well, but afterwards, one of the senior managers took me aside. She said, “We love you Dave, but do you have to do the whole Cockney barrow-boy bit?” At first I couldn’t work out what she meant, then it clicked, she was talking about my accent. She wasn’t listening to what I said, she was listening to how I said it. And she assumed I must be putting it on for effect. (Davetrott.com)

Mum called into the living room from the kitchen in her best mock-posh. (Rob Chapman, All I Want Is Out of Here) 

I overheard a radio producer once saying that I had “a polytechnic accent”. (Suzanne Moore May 2022 This week academics are complaining about “accentism”.)

My wife has an RP accent; my great-uncle was pure Yorkshire. It's a good job that my father and I were present when they met, as neither of them could understand the other. (AW via Facebook. A few words rather than “complete incomprehension”? A taxi firm’s Scottish controller stumped me with “after mudnate”.)

My mother was a Yorkshire lass, working class and proud of it. But she dropped the accent, and only used it when we went to visit my grandparents. She learnt to use English with a very neutral accent and with all its consonants. (@meade_newman)

On my little island oilfield in Indonesia in the 1960s, the Field Superintendent (the most senior person there) was a Sumatran from a very high-class family. His voice was so soft that I could never manage to speak to him on the telephone because I never heard his replies so I always had to go to his office instead. (It was a pretty small outfit and that was no great hardship.) I was told that speaking softly was a sign of his high (family) status in that part of the country. (Teacup)

I work with someone like this. Promoted beyond her abilities because she speaks with a plum in her mouth. (via Twitter. That was me.)

Raised in Surrey, but lived in Hull for a while. Hull men might approach me, but would either back off or get almost aggressive once I opened my mouth. (@PenelopeClay10 Same here. She moved south again.)

Demos! Why can’t they say “demonstration” properly? I hate abbreviations. (Mrs Riseley-Porter in Agatha Christie’s Nemesis.)

A university is offering students what is believed to be the first module in chit-chat and networking. BPP University Law School has hired Georgie Nightingall, founder of Trigger Conversations, to help students have “good conversations” that “expand your perspectives and your relationships”. The university decided to launch the class after a poll found that 43% of its students feared they would be judged by the way they speak during their legal careers. (The Week. But surely social skills are so subtle and nuanced that they can’t possibly be put into words and we should all pick them up by osmosis, as I've been told?)

Barbara Windsor’s mother Rose had great ambitions for her, paying for elocution lessons in an attempt to lose her cockney accent and move her up the social ladder. Windsor later said her mother's family felt she had married beneath her... At the Aida Foster School in Golders Green, the teachers took their turn in trying to iron out her cockney accent but all failed. (BBC.co.uk. Shouldn’t that “lose” be something like “erase”? You can’t lose somebody else’s accent.)

More here, and links to the rest.

Classy Quotes 19

Stockbroker belt

Everything in the environment I grew up in seemed to suggest that making a fuss would be a bad idea. (Washington Post on reporting rape)

That's what you get from middle-class conformity. That crime victims are told "not to make a fuss". (M. v. Aufschnaiter ‏@mva_1000)


It's a shame but most ppl in the UK are snobs would hate to be thought of as working class. (Kevin Ryan ‏@RyanLinandkevin in a discussion of "hardworking families")

I love being told people can't be working class as soon as they have a decent job. Not patronising at all. (@salihughes)


Notions of class/posh/status are all relative and often unknown beyond your own. (Mr The Boy ‏@knitboy Someone told him “You’re better than me – you’re posh”.)

Folk have an odd concept around "poshness" don't they. Often preconceived and wide of the mark in reality. (Ed Chadwick ‏@photo_ed)

The whining, hypocritical, know-nothing wing of the middle class who can never admit that they are fortunate and must always pretend to be put upon. (Guardian on Nigel Farage March 29, 2015)

That strange class that straddles the awkward divide between the English petite and haute bourgeoisie... in-betweeners. (Will Self on Nigel Farage)


bougie: Aspiring to be a higher class than one is. Derived from bourgeois - meaning middle/upper class, traditionally despised by communists.  (Urban Dictionary – not for those of a nervous disposition. Nothing to do with the French for “candle”.)

Domestic servants who know their place and are not foolishly "above it" are respected and not "looked down on". (Girl’s Own, late 19th century)

I’m in practice at Churchford. You know, stockbrokers pretending to be farmers and expense-account executives pretending to be gentlemen. (Richard Gordon, Dr Gordon’s Casebook)

The only reason anyone listens to opera is because it's bad form to wear a hat saying "I went to private school". (Comment is Free commenter)

My problem with Mother’s Day is I just don’t know the form. It is essentially, an alien ritual, one I struggle to take seriously. We never kept Mother’s Day in my family. We dismissed is as a capitalist plot, a scheme imported from America to encourage the downtrodden proletariat (as well as the undowntrodden middle class to which we belonged) to part with their hard-earned money. (Robert Crampton, Times March 28, 2015 He grew up in the 80s, when practically everything was a capitalist plot.)

To counter being too 'middle class', the @nationaltrust will take art out of its stately homes. Really. (Bendor Grosvenor ‏@arthistorynews)

Simultaneously most bourgeois AND most bookselly thing I will say today "Oh no I dropped labneh on the book-token printer". (@lucyfishwife)

"I think the broadcasters are getting above their station." (Tory MP Philip Davies tells Radio 4, March 2015, not 1915 Or was it a joke? Radio? Station? You kill me!)

I was asked how old I was, what school I’d gone to and - when the recruiter hadn’t heard of it - whether it was fee paying. She enquired what my boyfriend and my parents did, and then finally told me that I’d be easy to place because I had a “nice accent” and a “nice face.” She “popped” me on to a job working for De Beers because “they can’t have someone with an accent answering the phone.” (Daily Telegraph on temping, March 2015 (not 1975)

The pedants’ complaints are not about real rules of grammar: they are a means of keeping divisions sharp. Their cause is not about culture but about class. (Times language expert Oliver Kamm)

Place settings are measured to perfection with a ruler, the footmen’s buttons absolutely correct, yet everything important is absolutely wrong... Modern capitalism promotes the myth that we are all masters of our fate. (Polly Toynbee in the Guardian on Downton Abbey, and the way it leaves out the gruelling toil of servants’ lives, their job insecurity, and the rudeness and inhumanity of their employers.)

I’d like to be very British about it but I can’t. It’s been horrendous. (Woman flooded out last year in Somerset apologises for being upset about it.)

She was terribly middle-class and ordinary and respected the establishment enormously. She virtually curtsied when the Queen came on television. She used to curtsey before the royal children, for goodness sake. (Margaret Thatcher's adviser Tim Bell, Times Dec 14, sticks a stiletto into his old boss)

Under the levelling process of college, it had been possible to ignore the differences in their upbringing. (Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot)

The posh, quite swiftly, have become a hell of a lot more like everybody else. As in, when they aren’t riding side-saddle to hounds, they’re watching Doctor Who and going to Topshop. (Hugo Rifkind Nov 2014)

"Talking about class has become a proxy for doing anything about it" Guardian editorial in the week of the "plebgate" verdict (AdamNathanielFurman ‏@Furmadamadam)

He even made a suggestion for a feature about how the middle class becoming rich “had ruined everything”. “They have ruined taste in Britain,” he moaned. (Tatler editor Matthew Bell in Posh People: Inside Tatler. He himself is middle class, the article pointed out.)

This is a splendid satire of what happened when the counter culture began to trickle down the affluent middle classes in the 1970s. Kate and Harvey are a typical Marin County couple. They've dropped their previous square lifestyle (where Kate got off on baking cookies and starching the kitchen curtains) to get in touch with their real selves. This involves scream therapy, encounter groups, consciousness raising sessions, dope and granola. The book follows an uneventful year in their lives when they experiment with an open marriage, life on a commune, and a series of new and ultimately disastrous partners. It's pretty tough on their daughter Joan (who joins the Moonies) and their pets, Donald Barthelme (an Afghan, who doesn't survive his mistress' affair with a poodle-groomer) and Kat Vonnegut Jr (a cat). The book was originally written in short weekly episodes, like Bridget Jones’s Diary, and the style of humour is very like The Diary of a Nobody or the Mapp and Lucia books: lots of bathos and a series of mini-sagas that overlap. Despite everything Kate and Harvey are quite sympathetic (they both secretly hanker after their old lifestyle). I thought it was very funny and prescient. The truth is that nowadays we ALL live in Marin County! (Amazon review of Cyra McFadyen’s The Serial, written in the 70s)

"An honest John Bull would only laugh at the knavish fool whom he saw blubbering and groaning over a grave stuck with daffadowndillies." (Victorian quoted in Dirty Old London, Lee Jackson. And you thought "the Dianafication of society" was a new thing?)

[Edwin Chadwick, architect of the infamous 1834 Poor Law] would not be considered for a post as one of the three Poor Law Commissioners, due to his ‘station in society’ – such berths were reserved for the well-connected elite. (Dirty Old London, Lee Jackson)

A classic Telegraph obit: "Trendell, known to his friends as Trixie, enjoyed entertaining at the Athenaeum."  (Andrew Brown ‏@seatrout. The Athenaeum is an expensive London gentleman's club.) 

Anthropologist Kate Fox writes in the New Statesman about the perils of meeting your grand friends for lunch at the weekend: your belt and shoes look too new and shiny; your wristwatch is too big and flashy; black labrador Monty’s collar has his name on it in inverted commas; you are sitting with your legs too far apart... (Oct 2014-10-15)

It's not the quality of the photo but the signifiers it includes - messages about race, class and educational background - that is most likely to influence [success on Tinder]. (BBC News)


According to Nicky Haslam in the Daily Mail, the following are common in 2014. (He says “It’s nothing to do with snobbery.” He also damns "relaxing" and "talking about kitchens".)

Talking about being ill – “just ghastly”.
Organic food.
Calling yourself an “intensely private person”.
Not owning up to having had “work” done – “everyone can tell at a glance”.
Wearing shirts with your initials on the cuff.
Wearing a bikini top with a skirt.
Saying “gardern” and “portrayte” instead of gard’n and portritt.
Flying somewhere hot for Christmas.
Saying “Louis Vuitton” (it’s just “Vuitton”).
Being a DJ at a party.
Mouthing the words to a song when dancing.
Living statues.
Drinking vodka and tonic (instead of gin).
Oxfordshire.
Harvey Nichols.
New Mini Coopers (they ruined the design, apparently).
Young royals – dull, apart from Harry.
Polo.
Avoiding carbs.
Foodie restaurants like Noma.
Personal trainers.
Going to the gym.
Ibiza.
Bellinis (the cocktails, not the paintings).
Claiming that where you live “has its own micro-climate”.
Glass or polished wood fruit in a bowl.
Dress codes on party invitations (apart from “black tie”).
Putting “carriages at....” on party invitations.
Gourmet canapes.
Saying that something is “a nonsense”.
Serving both sparkling and still water in a private house – it should be a jug of tap water.
“Cuff links and shirt studs. The Queen’s dressmaker Hardy Amies told me that they should only ever be worn with a starched evening shirt with cuffs too stiff to be buttoned.”
Richard Branson.
Elaborate coffee, milk in coffee.
Conservatories (become a children’s playroom).
Wearing airline pyjamas.
Dog walking.
Garrick club ties.
Collapsible umbrellas.
Ultra-expensive bikes.
Skiing in France (apparently Courchevel is full of Russians!).
Speeches at weddings and office leaving dos.
Minding about smoking.
Farm shops, and especially meeting for coffee at one.
Enormous bath towels.
Saying “uz” for us.
Knocking easyJet.
Telling everyone that your blood sugar is low, or that you’re wheat intolerant. Or “I can’t eat dairy.”
Art and design – too ubiquitous.
Miniature trees in window boxes (too tasteful).
The hymn “Lord of the Dance” – so happy-clappy. (It’s a 17th century Shaker hymn.)
Cheese boards with too many cheeses – means the host is insecure.
Long-running TV shows and plays (Downton, Phantom, The Woman in Black).
Box sets.
Talking back to the Satnav.
Saying “bye-bye” instead of goodbye.
Scottish accents.
Saying “All the vegetables came from our garden.”
Tiramisu. James Bond. My Way. Jazz.
And “It’s terribly common to be confident.”
More here, and links to the rest.

Choose Your Words Carefully 2

Let them eat cake

Or you'll give away your background. And that can be dangerous...

“Nothing was more likely to get you beaten up in Durham than rhyming ‘grass’ with ‘arse’. But I found it got worse when I left home. I remember hamming it up even more, when I grew fed up of the constant ‘Really? You don’t SOUND like you come from Durham.’” (David Perry in a letter to the London Review of Books, Feb 2014)

And some people say that class has disappeared. Or at least, it's more nuanced now. It's based on income and background, not genetics. (Translation: Class is still with us.)

THE UPPER CRUST
I used to say “mmmmmm” on a downward inflection for “yes”. Poshos understand that it just means agreement. Others take it as a sneer. Or else they choose to take it that way because they think I ought to despise them. (I’ve been bullied for saying "Mmmm". I've been bullied for saying "Absolutely!" I’ve even been bullied for saying “yes”. Yeah, right, OK, then…)

When taking off posh people, sprinkle your sentences with “darling” and “my dear”. Also mince around as if about to say “La, Sir Percy!” Posh people would not recognise themselves. If you really want to pass for posh, call a swimsuit a "cozzy". Delicious food is "ambrosial". Ask querulously: "“Why does Twitter now subject me to people I don't follow just because someone I do has replied to them?” (Twitter is a bit too democratic for their taste. Robert McCrum wails about "the abuse and impoverishment of English online – notably, in blogs and emails", and what he perceives as "the overall crassness of English prose in the age of global communications".)

When your holiday accommodation is disapointing, say: “We ended up in a pretty grisly cottage.”
“Squalid” used to be an upper-class term of general disapproval. (There's an overlap with “sordid”.) Lucian Freud thought birth control was “squalid”. Squalid was the opposite of gracious living – the milk bottle on the table versus the Georgian silver cream jug. Writer Penelope Fizgerald was given a council flat after her houseboat sank, on what she ungratefully called a “squalid council estate”.

Another upper-class habit is using the brand names of long-vanished products: instead of "glue", Seccotine, Gripfix, Bostick or Copydex. Posh people insist that you don't call a house or flat a "home", or a stamp a "postage stamp". And they have a strange habit of saying “hokkay” for OK.

THE SQUEEZED MIDDLE
The next few rungs down, the upper middle-class Upwards, the middle-middle Weybridges, and the lower-middle Teales, have their own ways of distinguishing themselves.

"Design" is Teale, "pattern" Upward. To Upwards, Design is an airy fairy subject you study at art school. "Jersey fabric" is Teale, "knitted material" Upward. Samantha Upward would never call anything a “utensil” and has trouble with kitchen “units”. On a "warm" day, Jean Teale puts on a "swimsuit" and goes for a "dip". Upwards and Weybridges used to talk about “bathing”, hence bathing-suit, bathing-costume or “bathers”.

What Sam calls a “shop-window dummy” Jen calls a "mannequin". Upwards never say the words “fascia” or “bunny-rabbit”. Teales give "gifts", Upwards give "presents". "Glue" is Upward, "gum" Teale. Jen can refer to “gummed paper” and a “gummed flap” without flinching.

I sometimes make Upwards shudder by using the term "breeze block". (I don't know the posh equivalent. Wikipedia says they can be called "concrete masonry units, concrete bricks, concrete blocks, cement blocks, besser blocks, breeze blocks and cinder blocks". Or do "we" not notice downmarket architecture created from these brick substitutes?)

Upwards don’t “greet” their friends. That’s what floor-walkers do – those men and girls in polyester suits posted around large shops to show you where to find what you want. Sometimes greeters with name badges and clipboards welcome you when you arrive at an official function. Upward girls could never do such a job, but they can work as door girls for their friends' fringe theatre shows.

What do you call a painting on three panels – a triptych? Upwards are more likely to say triptick because they know it’s Greek. Overcorrecting Teales say tripteesh if they say it at all. Upwards call the fungus on boulders "litchen". "Liken" is a bit downmarket. But Weybridges and Teales probably think litchen is downmarket. "Liken" is gaining ground, and some people even pronounce lichen as if it was German.

The pompous Weybridges love to say “above all”,  “It doesn’t much matter”, or "No matter!". They're also fond of:

overly
throughout
delightful
gives great pleasure
prior to

They pronounce the T in often.

More here, and links to the rest. and in my mini ebook How to Talk Posh.

What to Say...

Gustave Flaubert collected the witterings of the bourgeoisie into a book called A Dictionary of Received Ideas (it was published after his death). He subtitled it "What to say in order to be accepted as a member of polite society". Like him, I have collected the sayings of the top people and turned them into mini ebooks. First How to Talk Posh (or how the posh talk):

And now Clichés: A Dictionary of Received Ideas:

It's a mine of misinformation, and tells you What to Say About practically any topic, or What to Say When almost anything occurs.

Here's a sample:

Bagpipes: exist only in Scotland.
Cards: Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great leader from history.
Center Parcs: Each park is enclosed in a giant, transparent weather-proof dome.
Dr Who: His new companion is always a feisty modern girl for our times, unlike Jo, Sarah Jane, Ace etc.
Facebook: Interactions are shallow because they're only a lot of noughts and ones.
Germs: Encouraged to breed by sudden changes in the weather.
Humanists: Worship Man.
Jokes: There are only eight jokes.
Mona Lisa: The one in the Louvre is a copy.

How to Talk Posh IV

Here are some phrases to weave into your conversation (continued from How to Talk Posh, II and III):

...of catastrophic proportions
...whatever that means!
...who has so far eluded us

a bit iffy
a bit insalubrious
a bit of a frost
a bit uncalled for
a certain hollowness
a distinct disadvantage

abiding pleasures
absolute hell
absolutely
ace
actually
ah, the classic ....
all very fine and large
an absolutely ghastly hat
an immense amount
and then we foregather at the cottage
answer came there none
apparently...
appears to have
appropriate
Apslootly! (absolutely)
aquapuncture (for acupuncture)
as far as I'm concerned
as I recall
as is my wont
at a low ebb
attain
august journal
awfully

And here's how to be genteel...

back on an even keel
bailing me out
bang in the middle
banking on
belated attempt
bitten by the hang-gliding bug AB
bog (for toilet)
bore a striking resemblance
boring beyond belief
bowels of the earth
bring forth
budding laureates
bunged me into hospital
burning issues of the day

chilled to the bone
Choosez!
classic error
cockers pee (for cocktail party)
come down with Dutch elm disease (references are always out of date)
come Michaelmas
commensurate with
commme d'habitude
copious amounts of...
cost a bomb
crackling merrily
crashing bore
cringingly embarrassing
cripes
crumbs
crush/bash/thrash/throng (for party)

Dare I say it
darkest Pimlico
dead chuffed
deathly hush
deemed
depression sets in
despite
dindins
dire
discerned
disembark in the nick of time
dispiriting (it was all rather dispiriting)
distinct impression (I got the distinct impression)
dizzy heights
do a X
doing your slightly insulting number/bit
Don’t be damned stupid.
Don’t make life difficult
Don’t talk to ME about...
Don't all speak at once!
down in the bowels of the earth
down with bubonic plague
drastically reduced
draw a veil over
dreadfully
driven barmy

eating irons (knives and forks)
emboldened to ask
engrossed in a book
ensconced in the sitting room
epitome
evinced
excellent
exceptionally stroppy
excessively
exhortation
exorbitantly

faintly off her head
fallen by the wayside
far-flung
fashionable
fell on stony ground
fester
filthy lucre
flare up
follow suit
for my sins
for some unknown and obscure reason
for the nonce
force to be reckoned with
frantic search
from cover to cover
from some august, farflung journal
frozen north

galore
gave him bottled hell
gave up the unequal struggle
generous allocation
ghastly
given that...
given the boot
go berserk
God forbid!
golly
golly gosh!
gosh
got lumbered with

haven't got a bean
hells bells
hence
hides a multitude of sins
hold the fort
How are you? Oh, surviving.
How very enterprising of them!
humongous
Hysteria's a funny thing.

I am in a position to...
I assumed a nightdress
I begin to revive
I can already hear a chorus of
I do see what you mean.
I dread to think
I endeavour to...
I find dressing up a bit of a grind. AB
I haul myself out of bed with reluctance
I knew not how
I KNOW
I may well do
I mean
I must be getting forgetful in my old age.
I nearly had a heart attack
I plucked it gingerly from the mat
I promise to throw myself into a veritable frenzy of epistolary efficiency forthwith.
I rather gathered that.
I read with interest
I say
I simply loathe... (overstatement)
I suppose
I surely will do
I take your meaning
I think
I thrust her lunch at her and she departs
I volunteered/vouchsafed the information that
I wander around the garden
I was literally petrified.
I was riveted.
I was somewhat irate.
I wonder if Michael Portillo's going to be there with collecting bucket (Web overheard)
I’ll do just that
I’ll have a dekko
I’m all for...
I’m doing a spot of accounting
I’m first and foremost a...
I’m literally...
I’ve just had the most hideous thought
if they so wished
I'll do a recce
I'm all for...
I'm first and foremost a...
I'm going to be inundated. (A lot of people are coming to stay with me.)
I'm literally...

immersed in a newspaper
immoderately
improve the shining hour
in a funny sort of way
in durance vile
in evidence/much in evidence
in full swing
in hot pursuit
in one fell swoop
in orbit
in that quarter
In the dim and distant past
in the fullness of time
in the nick of time

indulge in: heavy petting, horseplay, the most extraordinary antics in order to get noticed, ritual slaughter, feminist politics...

inexpressibly dreary
inflict: I don’t want to inflict myself on you
initially
inmost secrets
inordinately
intensely
intrepid new members

It was a bonus.
It was a major event (something utterly trivial)

keep sane
keeping/putting a brave face on it
kind of
kiss of death
laden with various foodstuffs
learnt a particularly painful lesson
less than charitable
like a lost soul
looks like a deranged tortoise
looks like the wrath of God/a bomb has hit it/ the wreck of the Hesperus
Lord help us!

made the effort to put pen to paper
making inroads into the mashed potatoes
manoeuvre yourself
marked lack of success
mass exodus
migrating throng
mindblowingly awful
mindless monotony of strikes/violence
more accomplished
much given to
muttered something about...

my epic novel
My eyes have been opened.
my own humble opinionmyriad activities

nearest and dearest
neck of the woods
no bones broken
No names, no pack drill
No thank you very much!
not exactly a howling successnot madly...
not particularly edifying
not very inspiring
nothing would induce me to
numerous

of any description
of catastrophic proportions
of that nature
Oh, my sainted aunt!
on a bed of sickness
on its last legs
on the blink
on these occasions
one dreads...
one of life’s abiding pleasures
only a solitary Oxfam shop
or whatever
or words to that effect
organised chaos

our illustrious/humble abode/palatial residence
our venture
out of all proportion
outrageously
overwhelming support
overwhelmingly ghastly
owing to the exigencies of two small children...

palatial
Panic not!
panic stations
paraphernalia
park your bottom
part of the world (place)
peace supervened
peculiarly revolting
pertains to
perusing

positively gasping (hungry)
prepared to divulge
profuse apologiesprofusely grateful
quite astonishingly horrid
quite considerably
quite why...

rather grim
really
residing
resonates
round off

screech to halt
See you anon!
seem to
seems to be a sort of
seriously
She always looks a hollow million.
She finally attains the phone
sheer coincidence
sick of the palsy
sit thee down
Sit ye down/sit yourself down
sleeping the sleep of the just
slightly spectacular style (litotes)
so hungry we were positively gasping
somewhat tatty and wormeaten

sort of
sort of thing
speculation was rife
sprogs
squirelly bananas (mad)
staggeringly nasty
stick out like a sore thumb
stood awkwardly to attentionstrangely enough
stricken in years
strict instructions
Stygian gloom
such a bore
such was my alacrity in grabbing these proffered sums of money
suitably contrite
summon up the energy
sundry
superannuated

take a pew
tend to
thank you very much
that was my master plan
the apparatus (knives and forks)
the bitter end
the classic symptoms
the contemporary opera thing
the domestic front
the dreaded...
the frozen north
the habits of a lifetime
the infamous...
the kiss of death
the lesser spotted...
the mysterious/dreaded/famous/infamous...
the order of the day
the proverbial (not a proverb)
the scales fell from my eyes

there was this man
therefore
they are mostly bills which I glance at with a shudder
they demolished the...
they stood awkwardly to attention
thin on the ground
things seem to tend to
this I do insist
this must be one of these ... we hear so much about these days
thrilled/thrilling
thus
to all intents and purposes
two of the more notable members of the...

undaunted
under duress
under strict instructions
unduly
unearthed
unremittingly
utterly riveting

various esteemed mandarins peered forth gloomily
vast sums
very much
virtually
waxing lyrical
We are not alone in ...
we glean from
we had a pile up of catastrophic proportions
weighty tomes
Well may it
Well, quite.
well-earned rest
wet/weed/twit/nit
whatever that means!
whereby
Who was possessed of...
who/which has so far eluded us
whole bang shoot
whole shooting match
whopping great
will remain permanently etched upon my consciousness
with impunity
with their customary alacrity
with which we shall be inundated
within the august portals
without undue effort
world class sweetie
Worry not!
would not come amiss
writhing in an agony of indecision

X has taken a dim view
X is in a bit of a state
xxxs galore
yonks

And here's how to be genteel...

How to Talk Posh I
How to Talk Posh II
How to Talk Posh III
How to Talk Posh IV

How to Talk Posh is now an ebook available here. 

How to Talk Posh III

Here's some posh vocabulary (continued from How to Talk Posh and How to Talk Posh II):


Posh adjectives
actively nasty
appalling
awful
basic (a bit basic: unluxurious flat/house)
copious
dire
dispiriting
drahstic (rather drahstic)
exiguous (it means small)
frightful
ghastly
ghastly (how perfectly ghastly)
grim
grisly
gruesome
hideous
horrid
immense
poky (too small or shabby flat/house)
simply dreadful
sordid (dirty, or finding dogbowl near cooker)
squalid (tatty surroundings)
sundry
various

Words for children
sproglet
ankle-biter
piglet

Adverbs
absolutely
actually
astonishingly (quite astonishingly horrid)
awfully
drastically
dreadfully
excessively
frightfully
generally
horribly
immoderately
inordinately
intensely
outrageously
overwhelmingly
seriously
staggeringly (nasty)
terribly
unduly
usually
virtually
unremittingly

It's not over yet...

How to Talk Posh is now an ebook available here. 

How to Talk Posh I
How to Talk Posh II
How to Talk Posh III
How to Talk Posh IV

How to Talk Posh II

Try talking like this - be far too elaborate. (Some of this is taken from Andrew Barrow’s
The Great Book of Small Talk.) Continued from How to Talk Posh.

Oh, that's absolute nonsense on stilts. Christine Hamilton Obs Apr 23 00

A few uplifting articles on positive values art, gardening, stately homes, acts of heroism would not come amiss.

Before I start on this tome I have to own up that history is not my forte.

Can I inflict myself on you? (May I sit here?)

Can I squeeze past? (Excuse me.)

Can we just insert ourselves here? (May we sit down?)

Cannibalism, deviants and questionable royal scandal seem to be the news of the day.

Charlotte was going through her pink period.

Cleopatra actually did not indulge in high jinks with a snake of any description.

Here I come, laden with various foodstuffs.

I accepted with alacrity—in fact I couldn’t have been more enthusiastic about the whole thing.

Of course we’re all bombarded with statistics these days.

Oh, lunch will feature. You can trust Alice for that.

I just took everything out of the fridge and threw it in an old icecream box. It could have been a complete disaster.

Is this an inopportune moment?

It decided to collapse at the psychological moment.

It's truer than you might think, I'm afraid.

I've just had the most hideous thought. AB

Sophia's in a bit of a state.

She really is an A1 sort of person.

She's a bright girl in a funny sort of way. AB

She's seriously holy.

She's unusually rubicund. AB

Shall we sally forth?

Shall we traverse one of these side streets, ya?

Shall we wander down and see if we can find something to eat?

The subject recrudesced later.

This surely smacked of something of a feat.

You may well ask!

Well, that was fortuitous!

You’re doing sterling work.

You’re in the nick of time!

More to come...

How to Talk Posh I
How to Talk Posh II
How to Talk Posh III
How to Talk Posh IV

How to Talk Posh is now an ebook available here. 

How to Talk Posh

When mingling with the crowd at Ascot or Henley, do you want people to think you are an aristocrat? Why not talk like posh people:

Crikey, righty-ho, tiffin, yah, rah. Good show, old chep! How absolutely ghastly for you, old bean! You, sir, are a cad and a bounder! Rather, old thing, by George!

Do posh people talk like this?

No! No one has talked like this since the days of P.G. Wodehouse (circa 1920).

The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1: No.1

Posh people talk like this…

People like the Stow Crats use overstatement and understatement. When talking about trivia, they exaggerate, using their well-known drawl. “We live in the wiiiiiilds of Sussex” or “daaaaaarkest Lincolnshire”. Oh no and exactly come out as “Eeeow neeeow!” and “Egzeakly!”

But when it really matters they understate. If they don’t like something they say “I’m not terribly keen on it ”. And if your mother was appalled: “Mummy wasn’t exactly thrilled.”

Everything is terribly, awfully frightful or ghastly. But if someone’s severely ill he’s “feeling a little sorry for himself”.

Some letters by the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire (the last of the Mitford girls) were published recently. A reviewer noted: “Their language - beastly, umpteenth, bags I, maddening, tiresome, conked out, 'killing' to mean 'funny', 'frightfully' to mean 'very' and so on - has a charm all of its own, but will soon seem as outmoded as 'gadzooks' or 'pshaw'.”

Brian Sewell, the art critic, gets his video retuned (and shows his aristocratic disdain for technology):
“A man came into my house the other day in order to fiddle about for an hour and a half. He utterly failed to understand either my standard video recorder or television. I finally produced the instructions and he still couldn’t make any sense of them. He kept getting on the phone to C5 and describing my machinery. Eventually, he felt compelled to put some little black box on the back of the video and told me that he’d done this in order to protect my present reception, but that under no circumstances would I be ever able to receive their undiluted crap. So I heaved a great sigh of relief and said “There you are, then. Off you go!”

Posh people don’t use modern slang. They don’t really notice fashion, and ignore popular culture. And they’re very (surprise, surprise) conservative, so their language doesn’t change very much. They’re fond of archaisms like whereby, thus, therefore and hence. But they also go in for baby talk: It was awfully expenny, I'll do a recce, have a dekko, a bit iffy, Seen my piccies? Was it a Chrissy pressy? Mind you don’t get wetty! See you soonsies!

More later...

How to Talk Posh I
How to Talk Posh II
How to Talk Posh III
How to Talk Posh IV

How to Talk Posh is now an ebook available here.