The Wonder of Whiffling Read online

  waggle pre-stroke trial movements

  sclaffing skidding the club over the grass before it hits the ball

  whiff a stroke that misses the ball

  skull to hit the ball too far above its centre

  shank to hit the ball with the neck of the club

  then the slow or fast progression down the fairway:

  chilli-dip a weak, lofted shot that follows a mis-hit that has managed to hit more ground than ball (from the image of taking a taco and scooping up a helping of chilli)

  fried egg a ball lying embedded in sand

  golden ferret a golf stroke where the ball is holed from a bunker

  mulligan a free extra shot sometimes taken as a second chance in a social match to a player who has made a bad one, not counted on his score-card

  before the triumphant arrival at the green:

  frog hair the well-cut grass that divides the fairway from the green itself and is of a length and smoothness somewhere between the two

  steamy a short shot or a putt that passes over or through the green

  stiff a shot that stops so close to the hole that it must be impossible to miss the putt

  TOUCHÉ

  Fencing, by contrast to all of the above, originated on the Continent and so has a language with a very European feel:

  mandritta (Tudor–Stuart 1595) a cut from right to left

  passado (Shakespeare: Love’s Labour’s Lost 1588) a motion forwards and a thrust

  volt (1692) to leap with both feet in the air by your opponent’s left shoulder

  appel a tap or stamp of the foot, serving as a warning of one’s intent to attack

  derobement an evasion of the opponent’s attempt to take or beat the blade while keeping the sword arm straight and threatening the opponent

  TOUR DE FRANCE

  Since their invention in France in 1860, bicycles have been eagerly embraced by our Gallic neighbours. So it’s hardly surprising that cycling is a sport with a French-derived argot:

  musette a small cotton shoulder bag containing food that’s handed to riders during a race

  domestique a member of a professional cycling team, whose job is to ride solely for the benefit of the team and team leader, instead of their own glory

  lanterne rouge the overall last-place rider in a stage race (from the red light found on the back of a train)

  But as soon as things start going wrong, we’re back to good old English:

  bonk a cyclist’s feeling of being devoid of energy

  sag wagon the vehicle that carries bicyclists that have withdrawn from the event (due to injury, bicycle malfunction, tiredness etc.)

  HEY DUDE!

  Surfers follow the waves; and though you can find something to ride on in Newquay, they’re altogether bigger, better and harder to stay on in Big Sur and Bondi…

  shark biscuit (Australian slang c.1910) a novice surfer

  hang five (US 1960s) to ride with the toes of one foot hooked over the front of the board

  knots the bruises and cuts gained from battling the waves and his board (a surfer’s status mark)

  grubbing falling off your board while surfing

  frube a surfer who does not catch a wave for the whole time they are in the water

  hodad (1962) a show-off who hangs around surfing beaches, boasting of his exploits and trying to pick up girls, who has rarely, if ever, tried to surf

  cowabunga! (Australian slang 1954) a shout of elation on surfing down a superb wave

  COLORADO CLIFFHANGER

  Climbing terms, likewise, come from mountainous places:

  gingich (Scotland 1716) the chief climber or leader in climbing rocks

  flash (Canada 1995) to climb a wall successfully on the first try

  dynoing (Colorado 1992) leaping to a distant or out-of-reach hand hold

  hang-dogging (Colorado 1992) a derogatory term for inexperienced climbers who hang on the rope while attempting feats beyond their ability

  TROLLING AND YUMPING

  Every sport, indeed, has both specialized terminology and also the kind of insiders’ slang that makes seasoned practitioners feel quietly different, whether that be…

  Rowing…

  gully-shooting (b.1891) pointing oars upwards when rowing

  gimp seat seat number 3 in an eight-person boat (often regarded as having the least responsibility)

  blip-o! (late 19C) a derisive cry at a boat’s coxswain colliding with anything

  Tennis…

  ketchepillar (early 16C) a tennis player

  nacket (1833) a tennis ball-boy

  Gymnastics…

  coffee grinder a manoeuvre from a squatting position on the floor involving a circle of the leg while keeping both hands on the floor

  fliffis a twisting double somersault performed on the trampoline

  fly-away a horizontal-bar dismount method with a backward somersault

  Billiards…

  feather to run the cue backwards and forwards across the bridge between finger and thumb prior to making a shot

  english the spin imparted to the ball

  cocked hat a shot in which the ball hit by the white rebounds off three different cushions towards a middle pocket

  or any of the other ways active people have found to pass their time, from long ago…

  cock-squailing an old Shrove Tuesday sport involving flinging sticks at a cock tied by the leg, one penny per throw and whoever kills him takes him away

  strag (Lancashire) to decoy other people’s pigeons

  trolling (Yorkshire) rolling hardboiled eggs down a slope (on Easter Monday)

  dwile flunking (Suffolk) floorcloth throwing (a serious, competitive game)

  postman’s knock (Oxfordshire) a method of sliding on ice (by moving on one foot and tapping the ice with the other)

  to right now…

  to do an Ollie (skateboarding) to flip your ride in the air and stay aloft upon it

  yump (rally-driving) to leave the ground in one’s vehicle when going over a ridge

  sandbagging (motorcycle racing) a stratagem whereby the favourite lets the rest of the field go on ahead, confident that when necessary he can regain the lead and win the race as expected

  bulldogging (rodeo) to leap off a horse and then wrestle with a steer (the intention being to twist it by the horns and force it over onto the ground)

  zorbing (New Zealand) harnessing oneself inside a huge inflatable PVC ball, then rolling more than 650 feet downhill

  WORD JOURNEYS

  upshot (16C) the final shot in archery that decided a match

  racket (16C from Arabic via French) the palm of the hand

  umpire (15C from Latin: non par, via Old French) not equal

  gymnasium (16C from Ancient Greek via Latin) a school for exercising in the nude

  RUBBY-DUBBY

  Country pursuits

  He that would have good luck in

  horses must kiss the parson’s wife

  (1678)

  By long tradition in Britain, certain outdoor activities have been elevated to a higher category, that of ‘field sports’. The most controversial of these is currently banned by law, though what this ban actually amounts to is anyone’s guess:

  own the moment in a hunt when the hounds show that they have found a scent

  cut a voluntary to fall off one’s horse while hunting

  craner (c.1860) one who hesitates at a difficult jump

  tantivy (1641) at full gallop

  shoe-polisher a derisive term for a dog that doesn’t stray far from a hunter’s feet

  TALLY HO!

  Since 2004 deer can no longer be pursued with hounds in the UK, marking the end of a tradition dating back well before these terms from the Tudor-Stuart period:

  abatures the traces left by a stag in the underwood through which he has passed

  velvet-tip the down upon the first sprouting horns of a young deer

  rascal a lean deer not fit to hunt

>   rechate the calling together of the hounds in hunting

  dowcets the testicles of a deer

  GAME ON

  You may however still stalk and shoot these animals, as you may game birds such as pheasant or grouse. Which is perhaps ironic when you consider how much more efficient an instrument a gun is than a pack of hounds. As the Victorian dramatist W. S. Gilbert put it, ‘Deer stalking would be a very fine sport if only the deer had guns’.

  collimate (1837) to close an eye to aim at a target

  nipshot (1568) in shooting: amiss in some way

  fire into the brown (1871) shooting into the midst of a covey instead of singling out one bird

  tailor (1889) to shoot at a bird, trying to miss

  air washed a bird that lands and doesn’t move or falls dead in the air and hits the ground (thus giving off very little scent on the ground and being difficult for dogs to find)

  making game of a dog when it finds fresh scent

  BIRDING

  A gentler approach to our feathered friends has its own special terminology. And as any birder will tell you, it’s simply not accurate to call them all twitchers:

  squeaking noisily kissing the back of your hand in order to attract hidden birds

  lifer a particular bird seen for the first time

  getting a tick seeing a bird you’ve not seen before

  gripping off seeing a bird when someone else doesn’t

  stringer a person suspected of lying about bird sightings

  dipping out missing seeing a bird

  whiffling of geese: descending rapidly from a height once the decision to land has been made, involving fast side-slipping first one way and then the other

  GETTING HOOKED

  Another ancient field sport remains highly unlikely to be banned (at least while Britain remains a democracy):

  broggle (1653) to fish, especially for eels, by thrusting a sharp stick with bait on it into holes in the river bed

  zulu (1898) an artificial fly

  fizgig (1565) a kind of dart or harpoon with which seamen strike fish

  guddle (1818) to catch trout by groping with the hands under the stones or banks of a stream

  angletwitch (c.940) a worm used as bait in fishing

  rubby-dubby (game fishing jargon) the minced fish (mackerel, pilchards etc.) used as a bait for larger fish especially sharks

  angishore (Newfoundland) a man too lazy to fish

  ROYAL FLUSH

  One pursuit of folk from country and town alike is known also as ‘the sport of kings’, a moniker that certainly remains appropriate with our current crop of royals:

  persuader (Australian slang) the jockey’s whip

  poppism (1653) the smacking sound with which riders encourage their horses

  call a cab the jockey’s action in waving one arm to hold his balance when he and the horse are taking a fence

  drummer a horse that throws about his fore legs irregularly

  morning glory a horse ‘catching pigeons’ (showing great promise on the training gallops) but unable to repeat the form on a racetrack

  airedale (US slang 1960s) a worthless racehorse

  post the blue (b.1909) to win the Derby

  GIFT HORSES

  With large sums of money involved, the temptation to tamper with the proper result is as old as racing itself:

  ingler (underworld slang 1797) a crooked horse breeder

  bishop to disguise the age of a horse by tinkering with its teeth

  drop anchor fraudulently to cause a horse to run slowly in a race

  hook (New Zealand 1910) to ride a horse with the aim of losing

  ODDS ON

  Down by the track, there’s little that passes the bookies by:

  pencil-fever (c.1872) the laying of odds against a horse certain to lose

  springer (UK slang 1922) a horse on which the odds suddenly shorten

  skinner (Australian slang 1891) a horse which wins at long odds (a betting coup for bookmakers who do not have to pay out on a heavily backed favourite)

  stickout (US slang 1937) a racehorse that seems a certain winner

  nap (bookies’ jargon) a racing tipster’s best bet of the day

  scaler (New Zealand 1908) a bookmaker who decamps without paying out

  They’ve even developed their own method of communication without words, known as tic-tac, where they signal with their arms to communicate complicated changes in the odds to outside bookmakers. To these professionals, there’s slang for any bet you care to make:

  macaroni odds of 20/1

  carpet odds of 3/1

  elef a vier odds of 11/4

  bottle odds of 2/1

  shoulder odds of 7/4

  ear’ole odds of 6/4

  up the arm odds of 11/8

  wrist odds of 5/4

  VERY GOOD GOING

  In the US and Australia (amongst other places) they have their own words for particular combinations of winners:

  exacta or perfecta a wager in which the first two finishers in a race, in exact order of finish, must be picked

  quinella a wager in which first two finishers must be picked, but payoff is made no matter which of the two wins and which runs second

  trifecta to pick three horses in a particular race to finish 1st, 2nd and 3rd (the payout is determined by the betting pool on the turnover of the particular bet)

  superfecta a bet that forecasts in correct order the first four horses in a given race

  WORD JOURNEYS

  jockeys (16C) horse traders (once called Jocks: men of the people)

  allure (15C from Old French) to bait: a device in falconry used by hunters to call back their hawks

  relay (15C from Old French) to loose the hounds; a pack of fresh hounds held in reserve to relieve a previous pack

  croupier (18C from French) a pillion rider, a rider on the croup of a horse; then someone who stood behind a gambler and gave advice

  MADHOUSE

  Indoor games and hobbies

  Cards and dice… the devil’s books and the devil’s bones

  (1676)

  There’s no shortage of enjoyable activities for those who would rather not brave our famously awful weather. Even the simplest-seeming have a complex terminology worth getting to know:

  murgatroyd a badly manufactured tiddlywink, flat on both sides

  squopped of a free tiddlywink that lands on another wink

  blitz an attempt to pot all six winks of your own colour early in the game

  crud a forceful shot whose purpose is to destroy a pile of winks completely

  lunch to pot a squopped wink (usually belonging to an opponent)

  boondock to send an opponent’s tiddlywink a long way away, preferably off the table

  LOW ROLLERS

  The number of nicknames for marbles indicates what a popular game this is too (and still so in the age of the Game Boy® and the computer). In the dialect of the north-east of England, for example, marbles have been known as alleys, boodies, glassies, liggies, marvels, muggles, penkers, parpers and scudders. That’s just the start of it:

  flirt (Yorkshire) to flick a marble with finger and thumb

  fullock (Shropshire) to shoot a marble in an irregular way by jerking the fist forward instead of hitting it off by the force of the thumb only

  deegle (Cheshire) a stolen marble

  neggy-lag (Yorkshire) the penultimate shot

  hawk (Newfoundland) to win all an opponent’s marbles

  smuggings! (UK teen slang mid 19C) mine! (the exclamation used at the end of a game of marbles or spinning tops when the child who shouted first was allowed to keep the toy in question)

  DICEMAN

  When you get a little older, it becomes more interesting to throw objects with a more challenging set of possibilities:

  snake eyes (North American slang 1929) getting double ones, the lowest score (supposedly resembling a snake’s stare)

  box cars (underworld slang 1937) double 6
(from their similarity to the wheels of freight cars)

  gate to stop the dice moving before they have actually come to rest

  ARRERS

  Many grown-up indoor games are found in that fine old British institution, the pub. One pastime in particular speaks of generations of players with fine imaginations and plenty of time on their hands:

  monger a person who deliberately scores many more points than needed to win the game

  Robin Hood when a dart sticks into a previous dart

  married man’s side the left-hand side of a dart board (numbers 12, 9, 14, 11, 8 and 16) that would get a reasonable score (the rationale being a married man should always play safe)

  right church, wrong pew hitting a double but the wrong number

  slop darts that score, but not where you wanted them

  masonry darts darts thrown so that they miss the board entirely and hit the wall instead

  spray ’n’ pray darts thrown by an irate and less talented player, rather quickly

  bunting the art of throwing while on your knees

  FEVVERS

  And that’s just a fraction of the jargon. All the scores in darts have their own names too. Remember, when playing darts you’re counting down, not up, starting from a set 301 or 501 and trying to end up with exactly zero, a process which is known as doubling out:

  madhouse double 1 (i.e. what you’re left in until you finish the game by achieving it)

  fevvers a score of 33 (from the 19C Cockney tongue twister: ‘thirty-three feathers on a thrush’s throat’)