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Wed 15 Dec, 2004 11:31 am
I have been reading a cheap adventure novel set in Victorian London and I would like some slang interpreted. The heroes have just escaped from a pack of zombies, and one of the heroes exclaims,
"Feather and flip you, daisy boots!...I'll carve you like a Christmas pudding, you mingy pross! I'll sort you out large, Sinbad the Sailor your skidgy hide, 'n' have your guts for garters! You twig me, yobbos?...Lord, I need a drink, I'm whacked to the wide."
I understand the bit about carving a Christmas pudding, and guts for garters, but the rest means nothing to me. Obviously it's a very colorful string of insults, but what does it mean?
Feather and flip=kip (=sleep)
Daisy boots = (possibly) a homosexual servant boy
Mingy pross = smelly prostitute
Sinbad the Sailor = tailor (=rearrange)
Skidgy=?
Twig me you yobbos= Understand me you hooligans/louts
Wacked = Tired out
A "daisy" was a innocent lad, fresh from the country.
"Wacked to the wide"--so tired that he can't keep up with what he's saying.
FYI the quote came from a novel "The List of Seven" by Mark Frost. An above-average but sometimes silly supernatural tale. The hero was Arthur Conan Doyle before he became a famous writer- and the adventure he has shares many details with the Sherlock Holmes stories he will later write. He also runs into Bram Stoker, who is similarly influenced in one chapter with events that will later appear in Dracula. Silly but fun.