WINCHESTER NOTIONS.*
SCHOOL slang in general can hardly be said to possess much literary or philological value, and by a great many persons the peculiar lingo which flourishes at Winchester College is probably classed under the same category as the cant expres- sions which are in vogue at other Public Schools. In the Slang Dictionary, Winchester "notions " are summarily dismissed as a rude niode of disguising English, 'akin to back-slang and similar purely artificial devices of a necessarily evanescent character. Such slang is the very spindrift of speech. It has no more foothold on literature than those savage dialects which change in a couple of generations. Thieves' slang is in a con- stant state of flux from prudential considerations. School slang, consisting for the most part of arbitrary and puerile play upon words, is similarly doomed to perpetual variation. "Win- cheater Notions" are differentiated from " 'Tother School Notions" in two important particulars, in their character and their unique method of perpetuation. Indeed, it is this method that is at the bottom of it all. Other schools, had they adopted a similar plan, might be able to furnish an equally interesting vocabulary. But they have not, and therein lies the vital difference. The institution of " notions " is a very serious business at Winchester. All "new men" are given a fortnight to master the dialect, at the end of which time they are summoned before the assembled prefects for "notion exam.," ranged in seniority, and plied with questions. Places are taken, just as if a real class were being held, and at the close of the examination those who have failed to pass are condemned to undergo a further test; in former years the penalty was a " tunding." It will be seen, then, that whereas the slang of other schools has only an oral currency, that in vogue at Winchester is kept alive by examinations and "notion-books," in which all the words are carefully recorded. Glossaries founded on these " notion-books " have before this been published, but their compilers have proceeded on the assumption that Winchester words were all as capricious and puerile in their formation as those of other school lingos. To Mr. Wrench belongs the credit of publicly proving that a large number of the " notions " are real, good classical English words which have dropped out of usage elsewhere. Appealing as he does to a general quite as much as to a special audience, Mr. Wrench has not attempted to give a complete glossary. The words which he has included in his list, to quote his own -words, "are those which seem to possess some historical in- terest. .. . . . They have all been in use at Winchester within this century ; nearly all were current twenty-five years ago, and the majority of them are still in daily use. A few have died out through neglect, and others have suffered a violent death owing to changing circumstances : these have been marked obsolete Places and customs are only inci- dentally mentioned."
On the whole, Mr. Wrench deserves cordial congratulation on the way in which he has done his work. And yet he cannot be said to have adhered very rigidly to the principles enun- elated above. Such forms as " chince " = chance, " cropple" = cripple, are specimens of that fancy for word or, more correctly, vowel-twisting which all schoolboys delight in. These particular forms may be peculiar to Winchester, but the tendency is universal. " Crocketa," another instance of this tendency, is inadequately explained, being, not cricket proper, but what is known elsewhere as " snob-cricket " or "pot- ' Winchester Word-Book : a Collection of Past and Present Notions. Compiled by B. G. K. Wrench, London: D. Nutt. Winchester: J. Wels. - cricket," the form of the word being possibly suggested by the irregularity of the game. Again, " rook " = a medium-sized atone, may possibly have originated at Winchester, but it is of such universal use amongst schoolboys that it would be hard to establish a claim to priority of usage, a remark which also applies to such words as " chisel " and " chouse." It is curious to note that the old Winchester word-books give the forms " purler "and " Bibler " where now purl" and " Bibling " are used. Here we seem to have the foreshadowing of those gro- tesque perversions which of late years were immensely in vogue at the Universities, and which were undoubtedly spread by Harrovians. " Footer " for football, and "Ducker "=the bathing-place, were, if we mistake not, the parent-words ; but their progeny was innumerable, and at one time no'word was safe from this irreverent curtailment. "Have you seen the new Botter ?"—i.e., Bottioelli—an a3sthetic undergraduate would ask his friend ; and we have even heard the crack of doom familiarly condensed to "cracker."
In the matter of derivations, Mr. Wrench is duly cautious, though we think that he is somewhat over-apt to hark back to old English engines where simpler and later explanations are equally probable. For example, the use of " Gomer "-= a large pewter dish, is no doubt rightly referred to the Hebrew " Chomer," which appears in the form " gomer " in the Vulgate and in old English writers. But a " gomer " hat—i.e., a chimney-pot hat—for going home in, irresistibly suggests as the true derivation "go-homer." So, too, We prefer the explanation of "Pax "=a chum, as a transferred Latinism —of which the " Notions " afford many examples—to that given by Mr. Wrench as the plural of the word "pack," used as an adjective, substantive, and verb by Shakespeare and Burns in connection with friendships and associations,—e.g., " Ower pack and thick thegither." One of the most charac- teristic Winchester notions is "Pledge you," which means "lend me," "pass me," or "give me." Mr. Wrench quotes from old books to show that the Danes, when asking any one to drink, used to say : "Drink, I will pledge you." But he leaves his readers to draw the conclusion that the phrase is a sort of ellipse, the imperative "give me" being omitted, while "pledge you "—i.e., " I pledge you," "I will go bail "—may be paralleled by the form of the Latin phrase amabo te, as used by Cicero. The curious use of "remedy "=holiday, has been satis- factorily cleared up by a quotation from the Chapter Register of Southwell Minster of 1484, where the word remedium is used in exactly the Winchester sense. " Remedyes " are also referred
to in Dean Colet's Statutes of St. Paul's School. In one or two cases, Mr. Wrench omits to give any adequate translation for the benefit of non-Wykehamist readers,—e.g., "Foricus ;" and in the case of " dole " = a trick, he has not thought it worth while to append the obvious Greek derivation. Some familiar "notions" are omitted altogether which were perhaps worthy of admission, such as "Nymph," " Pemrai," "Founder's kin;" but the collection is very fairly representative as it stands, and the illustrations have been selected in a judicious and scholarly manner. If ever a dictionary of schoolboy slang comes to be compiled, Mr. Wrench's glossary will be amongst the most valuable materials ready to the hand of the lexicographer.
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