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A Guide to Cavnish Slang

Want to know more about Cavnish street slang?  Here’s a handy guide, so next time you want to insult someone, you can feel free to call them a “blithering gormless, bodgy chizzer.”

 

A Guide to Cavnish Slang, Idioms, and Terms

  • A’right — all right (pronounced a’reet)
  • Aught — anything
  • Blithering — intensifier, kind of like how we use freaking (as in, “you’re a freaking idiot!”)
  • Bodgy — idiotic, foolish, daft
  • Bog off — go away! (somewhere between “go away!” and a more obscene way of saying the same thing)
  • Boxy — cameraman, so called because of their big, box-shaped cameras
  • Breeks — short trousers that close below the knee, like knickers
  • Bum-rush — means to get the boot, or get kicked out of a place (often physically)
  • Cacky — like “blithering”, a general intensifier
  • Canny (adv.)— intensifier meaning really, used for positive descriptions
    • canny (adj.) — nice, sweet, dear, good
  • Chizzer — cheater, swindler, fake
  • Chunnering — blabbering, talking nonsense
  • Copper — policeman
    • Get copped — get arrested, nabbed by the police
  • Daft/dafty — stupid, silly, ignorant; a silly person
  • Dan’ — don’t (pronounced dahn)
    • Dan’ na — don’t know
  • Dance in the dark — a highly nuanced phrase, referring to mischief that might verge on the sinister or dangerous — behavior that skims the line between the acceptable and the criminal
  • Devil in a doghouse — a whole lot of trouble, or something really bad/dangerous — like having a wolf by the ears or a tiger by the tail
  • Div’n — didn’t (“I div’n do it!”)
    • Div’n na — didn’t know (“I didn’t know” would be rather slurred together, as in, “I’d-uv-nah”)
  • Fitsy — nervous, anxious, twitchy
  • Free on the wing — on your own, independent
  • Gan — go
    • gannin’ — going
    • ganned — went
    • ganna gan — going to go
  • Gawp — stare; gape
  • Get fibbed  — be fooled, lied to
  • Goggle — look at, observe — get a goggle of something would be to get a peek at it, while keep a goggle on means to keep an eye on.
  • Gormless — clueless, dumb, sometimes worthless
  • Grobbing — intensifier meaning really, generally used for expressions of surprise, not as a common intensifier (so, you’d say, “That was grobbing huge!” but not “She’s grobbing nice” — see canny).
  • Hack — like a taxi, a coach-for-hire
    • Hackie — a hack-driver
    • Hack-stand — a covered place to wait for a hack
  • Heads or horns — basically “heads or tails” — the Cavnish gold standard coin has the face of the first monarch on one side and a stag’s head on the other
  • In the spits — in trouble, mischief — usually the kind of mischief that would result in being apprehended by the police
  • Jackstraight — straight as a board; bolt upright
  • Jake — great, fine, okay
  • Jixy — a mage, originally derived from the word “magic”, as in, “magicksy folks”
  • Manky — gross, foul, soiled, disgusting
  • Modock — an aviator, pilot
  • Moon-brained — loony, lunatic, crazy, clueless
  • Muck — mess  all the phrases based on this word have a slightly obscene meaning, rather like “crap”
    • Muck around/about — mess around, in the sense of getting into mischief, or starting conflicts with other people
    • Muck up — ruin, screw up
    • Muckery — mess, nonsense
  • Newshawk — journalist, reporter
  • Nick — jail, prison — used more for the common city jail, not the palace prison
  • On the get — running from the police, making a getaway
  • Skappers — chow, food, dinner, munchies
  • Skapped — starving, as an exaggeration
  • Skitter—a child, not used for older teens
  • Skundered — very angry, furious
  • Slag — tease, pester
  • Stars — an expression of surprise, more like “Oh God,” than something like “gosh” or “golly”
  • Stoolie — a rat, informant, stool-pigeon
  • Stravitz — expression that means something like, “Cheers” or “To your health”
  • Swacked — drunk, completely intoxicated
  • Tag — a nickname or an identifier used instead of a name — usually it reflects something about the person’s personality or appearance
  • Tazimy dragon-like beings from myth who used to devour the souls of the faithless
  • Tetchy — ornery, grouchy, argumentative
  • Thayo/thayoispirits — not necessarily evil like demons, but more like the Greek daemon, which can be benevolent or evil
  • Topsy — from topsy-turvy, meaning dizzy, head-over-heels, out of sorts
  • Trompers — boots
  • Trucky — plucky, combative, in a fighting mood (from truculent)
  • Wanked — in a tizzy, excited, frenetic
  • Yam/yamming — to be eager for something, to go after something
  • Yammering — noisy, excited
  • Zotz — to kill or utterly destroy someone or something

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