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/thayoi — spirits — 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