Regency Slang

Some favorites or useful words from http://www.regrom.com/regency-lingo/

This lingo was already listed. I figured it might be useful to have a dictionary that had been edited at least once for sexism/sex shaming/body shaming, etc.

(genders edited to be more inclusive with the original intended gender marked (f) or (m) where needed.)

Accounts, to cast up one’s: To vomit.

Adventuress: Euphemism for prostitute or wild woman

Amiable: having or displaying a friendly and pleasant manner

Apoplexy: unconsciousness or incapacity resulting from a cerebral hemorrhage or stroke

Bamboozle: To cheat or deceive.

Barking irons: pistols

Beau: (m) a person with presence, and often vain, good looking, and a notable fashion icon

Beau monde: fashionable world or fashionable people.

Bilk: to swindle or cheat.

Blade: (m) dashing younger person of fashion, meant to imply youth and maybe a bit of immaturity or impetuousness

Blazes: Euphemism for hell or the devil

Bloody: Difficult to define etymology or definition, it was an extremely common oath as early as the 18th century and continued into the 19th century.

Blue-deviled: Affected with the blue devils; depressed, melancholy, low-spirited.

Bluestocking: (f) an intellectual or literary person. Originally a member of the 18th-century Blue Stockings Society from England led by the hostess and critic Elizabeth Montagu,

Bond Street Beau: (m) a well dressed person who liked to shop in and around Bond Street, but in particularly liked to go on the stroll on Bond Street

Bouncer: A barefaced lie

Buck: (m) A popular, fashionable person who pursued pleasure, blood or sporting type

Claptrap: absurd or nonsensical talk or ideas

Corinthian: (m) athletes, sportsfolx who excelled in most sporting activities of the day including fencing, boxing, hunting, shooting, driving and riding in addition to be always well dressed and mannered gentlefolx

Costermonger: a person who sells goods, especially fruit and vegetables, from a handcart in the street.

Countenance: a person’s face or facial expression; support.

Courses: Menstrual period.

Cravat: a short, wide strip of fabric worn by men around the neck and tucked inside an open-necked shirt. These could be tied in a variety of styles:

Cucumberish: To be broke or in debt.

Dandy: (m) A person of fashion, charm and wit. The preferred subdued, carefully curated looks that reflected a “studied masculinity” with dark colors, no perfume, and artful accessories. This term came into prevalence in 1813.

Dicked in the nob: Silly; crazed.

Dudgeon: a feeling of offense or resentment; anger

Fortnight: A fortnight is a unit of time equal to 14 days (2 weeks).

Fudge: lies, nonsense

Fustian: a thick cotton and flax (linen) woven fabric. When used as slang, it means b.s. or laying it on thick. This may be a Heyerism.

Grand: one thousand pounds (GBP)

Groat: four pence

Hot flannel: Beer, gin, eggs, sugar and nutmeg mixed as warm drink.

Hunt the Squirrel: (genders preserved to avoid confusion of original game. You could change this easily) A woman flies while the man pursues her, but as soon as she turns, he runs away and she must follow. This was a considered a naughty game.

Hunting the Squirrel: A game usually played by post-boys and stage coachmen, whereby the coach would follow a one horse chaise and then pass it, brushing the wheels and frightening the people inside the chaise.

Incomparable: (f) a person of the ton without rival, match or peer.

Mawkish: Excessively and objectionably sentimental; sickening or insipid in taste

Merry Andrew: A buffoon, fool, or someone who clowns

Nonesuch or Nonpareil: (m) similar to Incomparable. Excelling at most things, including sports, driving, and the cut of their jib, they were a person to be aped

Pink of the Ton (Pink of Fashion): (m) Height of fashion or top of the mode.

Pony: 25 pounds Sterling (Cant)

River Tick: To have no money; be in debt

Sennight: A week

Swell: Wealthy, elegant person; fashionably dressed or equipped; puffed-up, pompous behavior

Tanner: sixpence

Tiger: (m) A smartly-liveried youth acting as groom or footman; formerly often provided with standing-room on a small platform behind the carriage, and a strap to hold on by; less strictly, an outdoor youth-servant. This term didn’t appear to be in popular usage until 1817.

Ton, the: High society, including the aristocracy and gentry, and sometimes well to do others or influencers. See also Upper Ten Thousand.

Town: London, when the T is capitalized.

Town bronze or town polish: acquiring the culture/manners of Town.

Quiz : a riddle or enigma one who quizzes another; an odd fellow; to puzzle to banter or make sport of; to examine narrowly and with an air of mockery; to practise derisive joking

Under the hatches: broke or in debt (Cant).

Upper Orders: High society. See also Ton, the.

Upper Ten Thousand: Thought to be a Heyerism, meant to imply the Ton. The term was actually coined in the 1840s to describe wealthiest residents of New York.

Whipper snapper: A small fellow

Yest: A contraction of yesterday

Yoked: Married

Zany: A poor, stupid fellow.

Sorry, I don't mean to overwhelm your thread or anything, I just love linguistics lmfao.

So, not exactly "slang" per se, but of a related topic of "weird quirks of the early 1800s regarding language/writing," which could be used for flavor. Now, I'm sure a lot of you are much bigger regency era nerds than I am, so you probably know most of this, but just in case, here's some things I found interesting:

Firstly, paper was quite expensive, so it was wasted as little as possible. Obviously this matters less to the wealthy, such as most of our characters, but they still probably would attempt to conserve it as much as possible. Thus paper would often be cut into half and quarter sheets, so that you would avoid wasting too much blank space.

Wood pulp paper hadn't been invented yet (contributing to how rare it was) and it was mostly made out of recycled cotton material/rags (ie why magazines and newspapers would be called "rags."). So more so than simply aging paper for aestheic, heavier kinds of paper than typical printing paper would probably be genre-appropriate, if that's something you care a lot about.

The primary writing instrument was the quill, which was most commonly made from large wing feathers, mostly of geese and swans, but sometimes crows. To be more opulent, no doubt fancier feathers (like pheasant, ostrich, peacock, or any other large, exotic bird) might be used. Swan feathers apparently produced thicker, bolder lines that goose quills, while crow feathers produce a much finer, narrower line (so I have a valid excuse to be an edgy bitch, as I prefer very fine lines. lovely). "Oak gall" ink was the most common, and ink was dried by sprinkling sand or a fine powder called pounce over it. Black, obviously, was the most common ink, but red, blue, green, and yellow was also available (I'm not sure how commonly, but that's probably of little concern to our characters).

Envelopes hadn't been invented yet, and obviously no one would want to waste paper on them anyways, so pages were generally folded into an envelop shape, and generally sealed with wax, and for higher-class individuals, pressed with a seal either personal to them or their family, which could be considered almost as good as a signature. Red wax was the most common, with black being used during times of mourning or on letters bearing news of death. Green was commonly used by officials, both government and church. I imagine that other colors could possibly be used as a personal flair?

Personally, I don't have nor can I particularly afford to invest in wax & stamps right now (plus it might get messy in the mail). I intend to experiment a bit with using hot glue, stamping it, and painting over it with red (which may also make seals reusable, I would imagine) but we'll see.

Finally, is the idea of crossing, which I find rather interesting. Because paper was so valuable, people would often write back over what they had already written, usually by turning the page 90 degrees and writing perpendicular to the previous writing. Obviously this makes it very difficult to read, and I imagine would probably be used more in less-formal writing (so, you probably wouldn't cross a letter to the queen, or a formal inquiry, but might a personal letter to a friend). Honestly, it's something I thought might be interesting to try, if only for the challenge of writing and reading it. I would probably not recommend doing it without permission from your pen pals, or if your handwriting is not fairly neat lol.

Some sources:

https://www.carolinewarfield.com/2020/04/letter-writing-in-the-regency-era/

https://ariettarichmond.com/paper-early-1800s/ https://randombitsoffascination.com/2014/10/07/touch-quill-ink-regency-letter-writing/

I found more than this, but some of what I found would be used more verbally and work less well in letter-writing, so I'll mostly just include ones that would work in a semi-formal or formal written format. I also left out any that I felt were, for example, overly sexist or body-shaming.

Exclamations

-- La: an exclamation similar to something like "jeez" or "gosh." IE, "la, it was such a beautiful sunset" or "oh la, I ate way too much cheese."

-- Faith: the same but used more in a negative context, like dang. "Faith, that cheese is pungent!"

Insults

-- Church bell: an overly-talkative woman (of course, in this setting, since we no longer believe in sexism, could probably be used to describe a person of any gender).

-- Flapdoodle: a "sexually-incompetent" man (I'm sure you can envision why, as much as you probably don't want to). Also can mean "rubbish" or "nonsense," which is probably more in-theme with our setting and a lot less rude.

-- Foozler: a clumsy person; someone who is prone to messing things up.

-- Gibface: an ugly person.

-- Hedge-creeper: a prostitute, especially a rural one.

-- Meater: a coward.

-- Mutton shunter: rude term for a cop, especially one prone to harrying street prostitutes.

-- Pigeon-livered: cowardly.

-- Ratbag: a generally rude term/insult, kind of like calling someone an asshole.

-- Vazey: (adjective) stupid or currently behaving stupidly.

-- Wagtail: a promiscuous person.

-- Whooperup: a bad singer.

These lists, which are relatively long and I'm not gonna transcribe/sort the entire thing:

https://www.regrom.com/regency-lingo/ https://www.georgette-heyer.com/slang.html

https://candicehern.com/regency-world/glossary/

The lists overlap quite a bit, but between the three of them should give everyone quite a lot to work with.