10 JANUARY 2004, Page 11

Mind your language

Veronica always leaves a copy of Viz around in the kitchen, like a cat leaving a dismembered frog on the lino. A regular feature of this comic for 'adults' is Roger(Mellie)'s Profanisaurus, a dictionary of slang updated through readers' contributions.

There is a brief version on the Internet and an email address inviting new entries 'if you know any amusing euphemisms for the sexual organs, sexual activities or bodily functions, and you can't think of anything better to do'. This is not a facility that Sir James Murray enjoyed when editing the OED, though the principle is the same; he relied on handwritten slips of paper sent by post.

One trouble with the Profanisawus is that there is no relying on the accuracy of the words and definitions. This is even more noticeable with the Urban Dictionary (on the Internet at the obvious site). Many entries seem to be the names of acquaintances of anonymous contributors, supplied with unsuitable definitions.

However, this site did, at Veronica's suggestion, provide me with a definition of Dirty Sanchez which is certainly widely accepted, although it is not an expression I hope to find the need for. By coincidence, a recent episode of that animated cartoon South Park (also notionally for 'adults') contained the word Hitler, meaning 'a moustache painted on' (unpleasantly if not as unpleasantly as in the Dirty Sanchez definition).

Once one gets the hang of it, the VIZ line in droll slang is fairly easy to understand: 'stand on the gloy bottle', 'clear the nether throat', and so on. But the Profanisaunts and Urban Dictionary lack historical structure. Both, for example, list mapatasi, from 'map of Tasmania', the supposed shape of the female pubic region. But you have to go to Jonathon Green's Cassell's Dictionary of Slang to find an estimation that it came into use in the 1990s. It might have been coined decades before.

Both the Profanisatous and the Urban Dictionary list shreddies, which merely mean 'knickers' or 'underpants'. I suspect that the contributor to the Urban Dictionary is an Englishman familiar with the Viz slang world. A Viz synonym is kecks, meaning 'underpants' or 'trousers'. I have heard it in current northern use. Green suggests an origin in Liverpool, from the word kicksies, which has meant 'trousers', or 'breeches' from the 18th century. The OED lists it and derives it from the noun hick.

I should point out that these slang reference tools record not adult but extremely childish plays on words that more serious people might find distressingly poss.