FORGOTTEN MONEY SLANG.

Hokitika Guardian, 11 August 1925, Page 1

FORGOTTEN MONEY SLANG.

(Bassett Digby ill the "Daily Mail.”) .Money slang has fallen upon evil days. 1 was quite startled recently when an omnibus conductor asked me if 1 had six coppers for a tif'.z.y. A tizzy! Why, I have not heard that delightful word since I was a hoy, when ii was quite as olten used in London as tanner. Now and again, too, twenty or thirty years ago, a sixpenny bit used still to be known as a kick or a bender. Two or three decades before that it was a tester or a cripple, half a hog, a sow's baby, a pig, a lye-buck, or a lotd of the manor. A buck, of course, is American slang for a dollar, and has been so for a long while. A os piece, in my young days, was still called a cartwheel, but no longer a taskeroon or a bull. How meagre is our slang for a shilling in these times. A mere boh. Act at the time ol the Crimean war bob was only one of a number ol terms, such a twelver, and hrealcy-leg, gen and teviss. stag, (leaner, hog and levy.

One still says. “Oh, that put the Icy ho si i on it!" meaning “knocked it oil the head" or “rendered it impossible." Kybosh used to he the slang word tor one-a lid-sixpence, hut the amusing incident that once brought it into the limelight—and the English “argot”— appears to be quite iorgolten. The sovereign had a Vot ol slang names with seemingly equal chalices ol survival—a portrait, a yellow boy, a goldfinch, a canary, a jaines, a couter. a I'oont, a poona, a bean, a quid and a thick ’mi : yet only the last two are now used. At the other cud of tho scale, coppers have now become tin-* 1110*4 resjicctuble of all modern money Hang. Bishops and judges who would never ask the bookstall mail at Waterloo to change a flimsy, a quid, a bob, or a tanner —let alone defile their dignified lips bv requesting the courtesy oi five tizzies for two-and-a-kick! —have -no hesitation about saying “Oh. do you mind copper- r”

Coppers nowadays, comprise both pence and ha'pence, but they used to moan only ponce. If you wanted ha - pence you asked for browns or mags or poshes or raps. When you exclaim, in annoyance over some contretemps, that you don’t care a rap, that rap. though you do not know it. is simple the slang word for a ha’penny in your grandfather's time.

For the word money itself, in MidVictorian England, actually more than .jf) slang terms were in common use. Few are the survivors. Chink, tin. and dibbs, survive merely in schools, those strongholds of conservatism. Rhino is seldom heard except in oldfashioned comic songs. Brass lias retreated to the Midlands and the industrial North. The ready and the needful alone are pretty generally understood to mean money.