Codswallop and nincompoops: Victorian slang that deserves a comeback

2026-07-31 · Idiomer

Idiomer hosts three complete historical dictionaries — Brewer's Phrase and Fable (1898), Hotten's slang dictionary (1874) and Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811). Buried in those 13,000 entries is slang so good it deserves parole. Our nominations:

Insults with craftsmanship

• Nincompoop — a fool. Nobody has improved on it since. Says exactly what it means through pure sound.
• Codswallop — nonsense, rubbish. British English never fully retired this one, and rightly so.
• Gammon — deceitful talk; flattering nonsense meant to trick you. The Victorian word for what we now scroll past.

Everyday poetry

• Gone to pot — deteriorated, ruined. From vegetables past their prime being cut up for the stew pot.
• Moonshine — before it meant illegal whiskey, it meant empty talk: something as substantial as light on water.
• Hobson's choice — no choice at all. Thomas Hobson rented horses in 1600s Cambridge: you took the one nearest the door, or none. Four hundred years later we still know the feeling.
• All my eye and Betty Martin — utter nonsense. Nobody knows who Betty Martin was. That is, somehow, the perfect origin story for a phrase about nonsense.
• Black Maria — the police van. Still heard in British courtrooms and crime novels.

Why we keep the old words

Slang is the fastest-dying part of any language, which makes it the most valuable to preserve. The historical slang topic holds all 13,000+ entries with their original definitions — and each one is labeled by era, so you'll never accidentally use an 1811 phrase in a job interview. (For the opposite end of the timeline, see the Gen Z topic. The treadmill never stops.)

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