J. Davidson - Planet Word

‘My parents often had English people around’ibid.

‘I just said thank you very much to Farad’ibid.

‘My wife, who’s British, said’Omid Djalili, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘To be called a bald, fat fart to your face’ibid.

‘You couldn’t operate on a yacht’Matt Allen, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘It strikes everyone as an extreme case’A. P. Rossiter, Our Living Language , Longman’s Green & Co., 1953

‘But do not give it to a lawyer’s clerk to write’Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Vintage Classics, new edition, 2007

‘Upon any such default’Security Agreement, Harbour Equity Partners, LLC, November 2010

‘The physical progressing of building cases’Sir Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words , Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1955

‘It may be said that no harm is done’ibid.

‘good and useful …’Sir Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words , Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1955

‘is the verbal sleight of hand’David Lehman, Sign of the Times: Destruction and Fall of Paul De Man, Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1991

‘Proactive, self-starting facilitator required’quoted by Christopher Howse, ‘At the end of the day, you’ve given 110 per cent’, Telegraph , 14 June 2007

‘Using language as a way of obscuring the truth’Ian Hislop, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘It starts in management consultancies’ibid.

‘What amuses me is the same management’ibid.

‘Doublespeak is a language which pretends to communicate’William Lutz, The New Doublespeak , Harper Collins, 1996

‘unlawful and arbitrary deprivation of life’ US State Department annual report , 1984

‘Nazism permeated the flesh and blood of the people’Victor Klamperer, Lingua Tertii Imperii (The Language of the Third Reich) , Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006

‘the barbed wire was not facing the West’Gunter Böhnke, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘My mother lost her purse’ibid.

‘Every joke is a tiny revolution’George Orwell, ‘ Funny But Not Vulgar’ and Other Selected Essays and Journalism, The Folio Society, 1998

‘Erich Honecker arrives at his office early one morning’Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Lives of Others , Buena Vista Pictures, 2006

‘We’re in a no-win, damned if you do and damned if you don’t scenario’Peter Jackson, quoted in ‘Jackson Talks Dam Busters: Controversial decision looms for WWII remake’, IGN website, 6 September 2006

‘David Howard should not have quit’Julian Bond quoted in Donald Demarco, ‘Acting Niggardly’, Social Justice Review 91, No. 3–4, March — April 2000

‘I’d go to school on the Monday’Stephen K. Amos, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘When people say political correctness has gone mad’ibid.

‘special vocabulary of tramps or thieves’1756, Online Etymology Dictionary , etymonline.com

‘the dirtiest dregs of the wandering beggars’Alexander Gil as quoted by Henry Hitchens in The Language Wars: A History of Proper English , John Murray, February 2011

‘that poisonous and most stinking ulcer of our state’Alexander Gil, Logonomia Anglica, Scolar Press, reissue of 1621 edition, February 1969

‘the continual corruption of our English tongue’Jonathan Swift, Tatler , No. 230, September 1710

‘the choice of certain words’ibid.

‘an epithet which in the English vulgar language’Francis Grose , A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue , 1785, University of Michigan Library, April 2009

‘The freedom of thought and speech’ibid.

‘I have never seen a man of more original observation’Robert Burns, in a letter to Mrs Dunlop from Ellisland on 17 July 1789, as quoted by Jennifer Orr, BBC website, Robert Burns

‘low habits, general improvidence …’John Camden Hotton, A Dictionary of Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words , Taylor and Greening, 1860

‘I likes a top o’ reeb’Henry Mayhew, ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ , The Morning Chronicle , 1851

‘the wandering tribes of London’; ‘There exists in London a singular tribe of men’John Camden Hotton, A Dictionary Of Modern Slang, Cant, And Vulgar Words , Taylor and Greening, 1860

‘harristocrats of the streets’ibid.

‘A citizen of London, being in the country’Francis Grose , A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue , 1785, University of Michigan Library, April 2009

‘one born within the sound of Bow bell, that is in the City of London’John Minsheu, Ductor in Linguas (Guide into the Tongues) and Vocabularium Hispanicolatinum (A Most Copious Spanish Dictionary) (1617), Scholars Facsimilies & Reprint, May 1999

‘Yankee Doodle came to London, just to ride the ponies’George M. Cohen, ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’, 1942

‘pulling someone’s pants up sharply to wedge them between the buttocks’Jonathan E. Lighter, Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Vol. 2: H — O, Random House Reference, 1997

‘Oh, it’s the tourists … I’m not Listerine but they get on my goat’Stephen Fry, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘Well, we’re losing it, aren’t we?’London Cab Driver, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘A Cockney has got a cheerful way about him’ibid.

‘As feely ommes, we would zhoosh our riah’Peter Burton, Parallel Lives , Gay Men’s Press, 1985

‘Hello. Is there anybody there?’Barry Took and Marty Feldman, ‘Julian and Sandy’, Round the Horne, BBC Radio

‘Omes and palones of the jury’Barry Took and Marty Feldman, ‘Bona Law’ , Round the Horne , BBC Radio

‘a miracle of dexterity at the cottage upright’Barry Took and Marty Feldman, ‘Julian and Sandy: Bona Performers’ , Round the Horne , BBC Radio

‘In the beginning, Gloria created the heaven and the earth’The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, King James Bible into Polari in 2003, as quoted by Christopher Bryant, Paul Baker: How Bona to Vada Your Dolly Old Eek, Polari Magazine , 3 December 2008

‘A lot of English people see Australians as a recessive gene’Kathy Lette, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘This is accounted for by the number of individuals’Peter Cunningham, Two Years in New South Wales, Henry Colburn, 1827

‘Pommy is supposed to be short for pomegranate’D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, Penguin Classics, new edition, 1986

‘I think it’s something to do with our Irish heritage’Kathy Lette, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘We shorten everything’ibid.