mudlark [muhd-lahrk]

noun:
1a Chiefly British. a person who gains a livelihood by searching for iron, coal, old ropes, etc., in mud or low tide
1b someone who scavenges the banks and shores of rivers for items of value

2 Chiefly British Informal. a street urchin

3 either of two black and white birds, Grallina cyanoleuca, of Australia, or G. bruijni, of New Guinea, that builds a large, mud nest

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Mudlarking's popularity has grown steadily in recent years, driven in part by social media communities where enthusiasts share their finds, and tour groups that offer a trudge through the shards of history's castoffs (Megan Specia, Mudlarks Scour the Thames to Uncover 2,000 Years of Secrets, The New York Times, February 2020)

On a freezing January day during the recent cold snap, those walking along The Weirs might have been surprised to see Jane Eastman - Winchester's premier mudlark - waist-deep in the Itchen, bent double as she scoured the riverbed not so much for treasure, as trash. (Sebastian Haw, Hampshire mudlark looks for treasure and trash in Itchen, Hampshire Chronicle, January 2025)

Thames mud - damp and oxygen-free - is a 'magical preserver', Maiklem writes, and extracting an object from its embrace takes care, skill and an extraordinary level of patience, from both the mudlark and those who share her household. (Joanna Scutts, Unearthing London's history from a muddy riverbank, The Washington Post, December 2019)

"It always makes me smile, how emphatically people say, 'the piping shrike — that's the mudlark, we call it the mudlark' … and just how powerfully this myth has stuck," he said. (Daniel Keane, Magpies, magpie-larks and the striking mystery of South Australia's piping shrike, ABC News, March 2024)

Origin:

The first published use of the word was in 1785 as a slang term meaning 'a hog'. Its origin may have been a humorous variation on 'skylark'. By 1796, the word was also being used to describe "Men and boys ... who prowl about, and watch under the ships when the tide will permit." Mudlarks made a living in London in the 18th and 19th centuries by scouring the muddy shores of the River Thames for anything and everything that could be sold to eke out a living. This could include pilfering from river traffic. Modern mudlarks have sometimes recovered objects of archaeological value from the river's shores. These are either recorded as treasure under the Treasure Act of 1996 or submitted for analysis and review under the Portable Antiquities Scheme. (Word Genius)

ripsnorter [rip-snawr-ter]

noun:
(informal, slang)
1 something or someone exceedingly strong or violent
2 something or someone remarkably good or exciting

Examples:

'Memphis,' his instrumental version of Chuck Berry's 'Memphis, Tennessee,' was a rockabilly-blues ripsnorter with a scorching 12-bar solo. (William Grimes, Lonnie Mack, Singer and Guitarist Who Pioneered Blues-Rock, Dies at 74, The New York Times, April 2016)

Listen up, dumpling fanatics, this place is a ripsnorter. Potstickers? Oh yeah. Xiao long bao? You betcha. Frilly shark fin steamers submerged in a chilli oil soup? Bring it on home, sweet momma. (Nina Rousseau, Eastern Dumpling House, The Age, March 2012)

There's a ripsnorter about a carnivorous tree-climbing buffalo, and a great sight gag when the three prospectors are lost in a blizzard and follow their own ever-widening trail like demented bird dogs. (Lawrence Bommer, Roughing It , Chicago Reader, March 1991)

Making all that happen is a savvy script that sticks to the truth only when it needs to and an actress who gives a gleeful, ripsnorter of a performance. (Kenneth Turan, Emma Thompson is a ripsnorter in 'Saving Mr Banks', Los Angeles Times, December 2013)

Poor little guy! He'd just about convinced himself that he's a real ripsnorter of a buck. (James Arthur Kjelgaard, Double Challenge)

"I had a ripsnorter of a fright myself last week," said Abe. "Was comin' down with an extra big load on, an' jes' past Black Gully I pulled up to give th' cattle a blow. Was squattin' in th' shade, with me back agin a coolabah, when something limp an heavy comes whack on to me head an' begins to claw an' scratch about like fightin' tomcats." (Edward S Sorenson, Aunt Jo - A Love Story of the Cedar Scrubs)

Origin:

'something of exceptional strength, someone of remarkable qualities,' 1840 [Davy Crockett], probably from rip ('tear apart, cut open or off', c 1400, rippen, 'pull out sutures,' probably from a North Sea Germanic language (compare Flemish rippen 'strip off roughly', Frisian rippe 'to tear, rip'; also Middle Dutch reppen, rippen 'to rip') or else from a Scandinavian source (compare Swedish reppa, Danish rippe 'to tear, rip') + snorter (c 1600, 'one who or that which snorts'). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Its first appearance was attributed to Davy Crockett ('Of all the ripsnorters I ever tutched upon, thar never war one that could pull her boat alongside of Grace Peabody'). But as the word appeared in one of a series of almanacs bearing his name in 1840, four years after he died at the Alamo, we must take the link with a pinch of salt - as we must such other supposed coinages of his as circumflustercated and scentoriferous, part of the largely fictitious tall-talking vocabulary of mountain men that the almanacs almost single-handedly invented. Snorter has had various senses that imply that something is an extreme or remarkable case of its kind. To take one example, around the time that ripsnorter appeared, snorter was applied to an especially ferocious storm, a sense that is alluded to in the slightly opaque example from the Crockett almanacs... Rip may be a more-or-less meaningless intensifier, as it is in words like rip-roaring, though its sense of 'rip' or 'tear' may contribute energy and vigour. However, the storm sense of ripsnorter's second element suggest rip might have another of its meanings, a stretch of broken water, as in rip tide and rip current. (World Wide Words)

highfalutin, highfalutin' [hahy-fuh-loot-n]

adjective:
(informal) seeming or trying to seem superior, important, etc; pompous; pretentious

Examples:

When you study English Literature you're given this highfalutin poetry that you really have to get into - that once you understand, you can really appreciate. But actually getting to that point takes a while. (Stories for unsettling times, chosen by Anita Rani, Jo Brand, Richard Armitage and Rob Delaney, The State Journal-Register, November 2023)

The only thing not funny about it is that it's essentially a shibboleth, a secret handshake for the vainglorious highfalutin pseuds who use it. (James Gingell, How to write the shortest joke in the world, The Guardian, February 2016)

If it seems strange to hold a fast-food company to such highfalutin standards, it may also be just what Burger King is going for with its new 'thick, hardwood-smoked bacon'-garnished creation. (Rachel Arons, Why Does Fancy Fast Food Make Us Mad?, The New Yorker, October 2012)

He had been prepared to find her a most difficult young woman to get acquainted with. Yet here it was proving so simple. There was nothing highfalutin about her company manners - it was by this homely phrase that he differentiated this Dede on horseback from the Dede with the office manners whom he had always known. (Jack London, Burning Daylight)

I'm glad you didn't load him down with some highfalutin, romantic name that he'd be ashamed of when he gets to be a grandfather. ( L M Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams)

Origin:

1839, US slang, possibly from high-flying or high-flown, or even fluting. As a noun from 1848 (Online Etymology Dictionary)

This Monday night shivaree is ideal to calm those who got too excited opening Christmas gifts. (Nick Canepacolumnist, Column: Nick Canepa’s Chargers grades vs. Tennessee Titans, The San Diego Union-Tribune, December 2022)

To the kids it meant running around the house beating on pots and buckets and dishpans, having a wonderful time making the biggest and worst racket possible. To the women it meant preparing and toting a mountain of food and doing a lot of gabbing and staying busy in the kitchen. To the young man getting married, well, the shivaree was something to be real glad when it was over. (Tennessee Ernie Ford, This is my Story, This is my Song)

The shivaree starts just after dark and includes loud banging, hollering, and serenading. Putting the couple in a wheel barrel and pushing them around is sometimes part of the fun as well. (June Is The Time For A Shivaree, Blind Pig and the Acorn, June 2008)

Jest the same it 'ud sure surprise me if we didn't git some sort of a shivaree pahty afteh nightfall. (J Allan Dunn, Rimrock Trail)

I wanted to keep Man sober, and I tried to get him and his wife out of town before that shivaree of yours was pulled off. (B M Bower, Lonesome Land)

Origin:

In 19th century rural America, a newly-married couple might be treated to a mock serenade, performed with pots, pans, homemade instruments, and other noisemakers. Such cacophonous serenades were traditionally considered especially appropriate for second marriages or for unions deemed incongruous because of an age discrepancy or some other cause. In the eastern US this custom, imported from rural England, was simply called a 'serenade' or known under various local names. In much of the central US and Canada, however, it was called a 'shivaree,' a loan from French charivari, which denotes the same folk custom in France. In more recent years, 'shivaree' has also developed broader senses; it is sometimes used to mean simply 'a cacophony' or 'a celebration.' (Merriam-Webster)

scuttlebutt [skuht-l-buht]

noun:
1a a cask on shipboard to contain fresh water for a day's use
b a drinking fountain on a ship or at a naval or marine installation
2 rumor, gossip

Examples:

For 20 years, literary superstar and 'Breakfast at Tiffany’s' author Truman Capote slurped up the scuttlebutt like his vodka-heavy screwdrivers. (Chris Cameron, Inside the murder that scandalized NYC - and led to Truman Capote's downfall , New York Post, November 2022)

And the scuttlebutt is that Albert just couldn't take the public criticism - again you're a coach for the St Louis Cardinals, and you're under the microscope of a huge fan base. Can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. (Dominic Genetti Hearst, 5 hitting coach suggestions for the Cardinals, The Telegraph, November 2022)

But gossip often involves positive tones of awe, inspiration, pride and affection, as well as a great deal of emotionally neutral content. Social scientists recognise that gossip transcends the limits of trivial scuttlebutt and fulfils important social functions. (Rob Brooks, Artificial intimacy: where gossip, relationships and social media intersect, The Guardian, June 2021)

The rum was watered down in the Scuttlebutt and either drunk on the spot or collected in a rum fanny, or can, for the sailors’ mess. (Ceremony to mark ending of rum tot at HMS Victory, Yachting Monthly, July 2010)

I gave Wolfe the scuttlebutt, but apparently he wasn't listening. (Rex Stout, Before Midnight)

Origin:

also scuttle-butt, 1805, 'cask of drinking water kept on a ship's deck, having a hole (scuttle) cut in it for a cup or dipper,' from scuttle 'opening in a ship's deck' (see scuttle + butt 'barrel.' Earlier scuttle cask (1777). The slang meaning 'rumor, gossip' is recorded by 1901, traditionally said to be from the sailors' custom of gathering around the scuttlebutt to gossip while at sea. Compare water-cooler, figurative for 'workplace gossip' in mid-20c. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

The second half is easy enough - a butt is just the old word for a large cask. The first half appears in the language in several senses with different origins, so we have to be sure we’ve got the right one. It’s not the flattish open container, made of wickerwork at one time, whose name survives in coal scuttle; that’s Old English, from Latin scutella for a dish or platter (its first sense in English). Nor is it the one that means to move with short quick steps, perhaps like a spider; that comes from an old English dialect word.

The sense we want is the one of a hole cut in a ship’s timbers. That’s been around since the fifteenth century, when sailors called any smallish hatchway or opening in the deck a scuttle, especially if it was covered with a lid of some sort; it was the usual term for an opening to let in light or air. It’s of uncertain origin, but might be from the Old French escoutille, meaning a hatchway. The verb to scuttle dates from the mid 17th century, at first in the sense of sinking a ship specifically by cutting holes in it - today we use it for doing so by any means.

It was usual to have a water cask on deck so that the crew had easy access to drinking water during the day. To make it easier to scoop the water out with a tin pot or dipper, the head of the cask would be removed. So it became known as the scuttlebutt - the cask with a hatch in it. Fresh water was so precious that a guard was often posted by the scuttlebutt to ensure that water was only taken to drink and not, for example, to wash clothes with.

It was the one place where members of the crew on duty in various parts of the ship could meet and talk during the working day. This is how Herman Melville put it in White Jacket; or The World in a Man-of-War of 1850: “There is no part of a frigate where you will see more going and coming of strangers, and overhear more greetings and gossipings of acquaintances, than in the immediate vicinity of the scuttle-butt, just forward of the main-hatchway, on the gun-deck.” Today’s office water coolers have pretty much the same ambience.

Real scuttlebutts have long since passed into naval history (though I am told that the word continues to be used in the US Navy for a drinking fountain) and the word has shifted its meaning to the rumour and gossip itself rather than the place where one exchanged it. (World Wide Words)

spondulicks [spon-doo-liks ]

noun:
1 (archaic) fractional currency
2 (slang) money, funds

Examples:

And, by hook or by crook they’ll find the spondulicks to pay the fees, convinced that the grind school will pave the way for the brat’s entry into Third Level. (OPINION: Great for some to be able to afford grind schools, The Southern Star, October 2019)

But now the world’s most hedonistic island has come to me. Or rather, a key element of it has: the legendary boutique called Annie’s Ibiza, where clubbers who are generously endowed with both self-confidence and spondulicks go to get dressed. (Anna Murphy, The day Ibiza style queen Annie Doble gave me a makeover, The Sunday Times, January 2021)

Suppose I can't raise the spondulicks in time for the ten train! (Nell Speed, Molly Brown's Orchard Home)

"I ain't as rich as old Jim Hornback, and I can't be so blame' generous and good to Tom, Dick, and Harry as what he is, and slam money around the way he does; but I've told him many a time 't I wouldn't trade places with him; for, says I, a sailor's life's the life for me, and I'm derned if I'D live two mile out o' town, where there ain't nothing ever goin' on, not for all his spondulicks and as much more on top of it. Says I -" Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn)

Origin:

1856, American English slang, 'money, cash', of unknown origin, said to be from Greek spondylikos, from spondylos, a seashell used as currency (the Greek word means literally 'vertebra'). Used by Mark Twain and by O Henry and since then adopted into British English, where it survived after having faded in the US. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

It would seem from the evidence that spondulicks (either so spelled or as spondulix) was originally American college slang. One of its earliest appearances was in a piece about college life in the New York magazine Vanity Fair in 1860: 'My friend the Senior got out of spondulix, and borrowed [my watch] to spout for the purpose of bucking the Tiger' (to interpret, his friend had run out of money and pawned the watch to get some more cash in order to gamble on cards, probably faro). The word was used later by such literary luminaries as O Henry and Bret Harte. From usage data, it now looks to be much more common outside the US, to the extent that the New Oxford Dictionary of English marks it as 'British slang'.

Where does it come from? 'A fanciful coinage', the Oxford English Dictionary says. It has been described as a 'perverted and elaborated' form of greenback (you may feel that to believe spondulicks could come from greenback requires a perverted imagination all its own). Eric Partridge suggests that it might derive from Greek spondulikos, from spondulos, a species of shell once used as money.

However, Doug Wilson pointed out that that Greek stem is also the source of various English words beginning in spondylo- that refer to the spine or vertebrae. He suggested that a stack of coins may have been likened to the spine, with each coin a vertebra. He found a supporting reference in an 1867 book, A Manual of the Art of Prose Composition: for the Use of Colleges and Schools, by John Mitchell Bonnell. A list of provincialisms included: 'Spondulics - coin piled for counting'.

If it is indeed college slang, either explanation may well be the kind of academic joke that would appeal. Otherwise, your guess is as good as mine. (World Wide Words)

Positioned right by the beach, you can catch some waves and cool off in the sea before you head back to dry land for a bodacious burger and a refreshing beer to wash it down with. (Cornwall burger joint near Newquay named one of the best in the UK for a second time, Cornwall Live, August 2021)

She looks as comfortable in a bodacious gown as she does an afterglow button-down (somehow impeccably ironed). (Kristy Puchko, Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson make 'Marry Me' a must-see rom-com, Mashable, February 2022)

The bodacious shade that falls in the same ménage as magenta and fuchsia, is a highly saturated colour with luminous white undertones and hints of blue and purple. (Lygeia Gomes, Bring the drama to work with these hot pink essentials, The Telegraph India, April 2022)

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1837 (implied in bodaciously), Southern US slang, perhaps from bodyaciously 'bodily, totally', or a blend of bold and audacious, which suits the earliest attested sense of the word. Popularized anew by the 1982 Hollywood film 'An Officer and a Gentleman'. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Some of our readers may know bodacious as a word that figured prominently in the lingo of the 1989 film Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Others may recall the term's frequent use in the long-running 'Snuffy Smith' comic strip. Neither the creators of the comic strip nor the movie can claim to have coined bodacious, which began appearing in print during the 1800s, but both likely contributed to its popularity. The exact origin of the word is uncertain, but it was most likely influenced by bold and audacious, and it may be linked to boldacious, a term from British dialect meaning 'brazen' or 'impudent'. (Merriam-Webster)