In addition to constantly asking you and everyone else I meet to give me examples of interesting British slang and British euphemisms, I have of course been independently scouring blogs and online reference materials on my own. In the beginning I had no real vision of the specific categories of slang I wanted to collect--anything and everything was fine by me. But I did want it to be funny. Or at least interesting. Or somehow curious.
There have been many words and phrases that I have come across that are clever. But I am finding that "clever" is apparently not the precise criterion for the book I envison. I just realized that. Cockney rhyming slang is clever. To some, at least. But that's not the book I want to write.
Being an American male who is anticipating marketing a product to (probably) mostly American males, I have made myself stop and ask the obvious question: "What do I myself find interesting and humorous?" The answer is important because I myself represent the target audience. More specifically I must ask, "What would I pick up and buy if I saw it staring back at me from a shelf at my local bookstore?"
I am beginning to see a pattern here. At the same time, I am starting to see why it is so difficult for you to offer me suggestions. This difficulty stems from the fact that not only are we separated by a common language, we are also separated by two very divergent cultures in general. By that I don't mean to imply that we don't have common roots; we do--in many, many areas. But we have, over many years, grown very much apart in many cultural aspects. It is becoming more and more plain to me that one of those cultural aspects is humor.
Did we ever have humor in common? Truly? I don't know. What I seem to be hearing from the British is that American humor is direct and coarse and doesn't make one think at all. On the other hand, what I am
personally seeing in British humor is that witty-ness and cleverness is more prized; one is
supposed to have to think before he "gets" the joke. In other words, it goes back to that Alan King story I was talking about yesterday. ("British humor is very instructive. It makes you think. It is very, very witty. It is incredibly cerebral. It is ever so clever. It just isn’t fucking funny.”)
Why am I bringing this up again? Because what I as an American thinks is funny defines the kinds of British slang and euphemisms I want to collect and write about.
Many of the things that you have shared with me over the past couple of weeks have been ever so clever and interesting. I especially liked, for whatever reason, things like "knackered" and "bugger this for a game of soldiers." Even though neither will make an American audience drop to their knees holding their sides or make tears run down their faces; they are still humorous enough to make it into said "An American's Tongue-In-Cheek Guidebook to British Slang." If there is one point that I would like to communicate with this post, it is the point that MUCH of your slang WOULD make an American laugh. Not chuckle. Not titter. Not cluck. LAUGH. Frankly, that probably wouldn't include "bollocks" (although, since I personally really like that one, it would almost surely make it into such a book), and it probably wouldn't include Brass Monkeys and/or their brass balls. That's clever. It made me chuckle. I'm not looking to chuckle. I'm looking to laugh out loud so that the other bookstore patrons will look over at me disapprovingly.
So, today and for the next few days, I hope you will allow me to gently steer you in the right direction by giving you some examples of British slang that an American male would think are funny. You will quickly get the idea and you will quickly come to understand the criteria. Happily, there is really only
one criterion: the material must be outrageously off-color. See? That wasn't hard, was it? No oblique references, none of those cutesy ever-present double entendres. Just say something like, "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, who had so many children her cunt fell off." That's all. Only say it using those unfamiliar British words, like "Mimsey."
Here I must hasten to remind you that I am speaking only of the American
male of the species. American females won't buy this book, probably--at least not in as large numbers as men. Their men will buy it and, when they bring it home, the ladies will
read it. They will read it and they will roll their eyes up to the ceiling and they will shake their heads. And they will say, "This is
terrible!" "This is
disgusting!" Because that's what American women do, by and large.
So if you understand clearly that our target audience is the younger, reasonably-affluent, book-buying American
male, then we have come to a real understanding. Because we suddenly see our common bond: young American males and young British males both enjoy vulgar humor and shocking potty talk. That's all. We've never really grown up. We're still in school with our buddies. So, once we know what we are searching for, of
course that search will become easier.
Let me turn aside one last time and quicky add that I am not looking for pure gutter talk and filth here. Absolutely not. I do not want vile words just for the sake of shock value. I am very overly guilty of that kind of thing in my own writing, and that is NOT the kind of thing I want included in this book. But outrageous British euphemisms for those various acts and deeds? Absolutely!
Have we had a meeting of the minds, finally? I have only last evening clarified my own thinking. I was going through page after page of (a rather boring but very comprehensive) compendium of British slang last night. And out of over a hundred examples found on the first few pages, there were only about seven or eight that I thought, "That's cool! That's funny! An American would snicker at that and read it to his buddy at the office." To make it even easier, I quickly found that all these "good" examples fell into the same general category: they had direct American equivalents, and they were mostly concerning your basic bodily functions, or various sexual acts, or words which describe people who were somehow "different" than the rest of us. Why is that funny to males of most nationalities? If you have to ask, you're not a male. I say that because the real answer is, "I don't know."
But that's what we're after. And ladies, since you are the very bedrock, reason, purpose, and source of male humor, you simply
must stay here in the room with us and inspire us. Please. I'm serious. We can't do this without your feedback. Not in a million years. If men don't think it is hilariously off-color they probably won't laugh out loud. But they also need biofeedback from the ladies: if the ladies don't cluck and shake their heads in (feinted) disgust, and roll those eyes, and tell us how juvenile we are...well how will we know how juvenile we are? You simply must stay with us. Women may not understand
why men think certain things are funny,
but they damn sure know exactly what those things are. Help us out here.
I am now going to list a few of those terms I extracted from that compendium of British slang that I think are humorous to an American male, and which have definite American equivalents that Americans can quickly relate to.
1. Brit. "Floating an air biscuit." Amer. "Cutting the cheese."
2. Brit. "Arse-bandit." Amer. "Fudge-packer."
3. Brit. "Arse-licker." Amer. "Brown noser."
4. Brit. "Aussie kiss." Amer. No literal equivalent. We just say "eating it" or "going down on her". Nothing nearly as clever as your referral to Australia being "down under."
5. Brit. "Baby batter/baby gravy." Amer. "Jizz. Cream. Load. Scum. and more."
6. Brit. "Bang one out." as in "Steve watched Bay Watch on TV and then banged one out before his mum came home." Amer. (far too many American euphemisms for male masturbation to list here.)
Hello? Hello? Anyone still out there?
Ladies, before you slam the door behind you, let me truthfully inform you that every single example listed above came directly out of the prestigious BBC and PBS compendium of British slang. So sit your lovely behinds back down and let's get to work. Guys and gals, now that you know what we're looking for, it's time to search the back corners of your minds for cute descriptions of various acts, deeds, and natural body functions. "Take a piss" is so mundane. "Take a leak" is even more mundane. So Americans say, "Drain my radiator." "Got to go see a man about a horse." "Tap a kidney." And many more. I'm not saying it HAS to be some sort of bodily function. That's just to get you started.
Let's get at it. Last one to comment is a bag of _________ (what?) And, while you're at it, please don't neglect the most interesting natural bodily function of them all, ok?
[He waits anxiously to see what happens. Will they respond? Will they participate? Or has he finally pushed them over the edge? Perhaps the Aussies will leave. (btw: Austr. "ankle-biter". Amer. "Rug rat.") But I'm betting neither the Americans or British will leave. God, I hope not! Please, people, make my email dinger go off. Don't leave me hanging here holding my breath...]
