English can be tricky.
I’m English, proper English, from south of The Wash. Sometimes I’ll use words that are common in our everyday language, but may not be so easy for others to understand!
Here you will find the translations for words and phrases, or abbreviations which google might not be able to.
As I uncover more words that people haven’t understood, I’ll add them to the list.
And finally, if I’ve offended you in any way whilst you’ve been reading my story
Bollocks. Testicles, also Scrotum and Scrotal sac, typically used to describe everything in the bag or the bag in general
Balls. See bollocks
Nuts. See bollocks
Cock. Penis
Dick. See cock
Knob. See cock
Love stump. See cock
Cunt. Traditionally, an Anglo Saxon word for where a man keeps his dagger. It’s also a common profanity across the British isles for when you stub your toe, or for when a politician or Piers Morgan appears on the television. Also commonly used as a term of endearment in the eastern counties of England and a pet name for your wife after three years or so. Also, vagina, Scotsman, anything welsh.
Pubes. Pubic hair.
NHS. The publicly funded health service in the UK
GP. General Practitioner, these are community doctors with surgeries filled with bored old people and children with colds.
Doctor. Can be used interchangeably for any kind of doctor really, depending on the setting. They work in hospitals and in surgeries
Registrar. Junior hospital doctor, but not really junior at all. Fully qualified with lots of experience, they’re just not consultants..
Consultants. Senior hospital doctors. They have their own car parks and lots of people following them around reminding them how important they are. In the main, these people have enormous responsibility and are the people that lead healthcare provision in our UK hospitals.
Professors. In the context of this blog, they are very senior teaching hospital doctors, I haven’t met one that isn’t also a consultant. They also have large crowds following them around reminding them how important they are. I should also add, these people inspire enormous amounts of confidence in everything they do.
Surgeons. People in hospitals that cut you open. I’ve been very fortunate in that mine have been professors, but I’ve never met one that isn’t a consultant.
Radiographer. Someone that takes pictures with radio waves
Radiotherapist. Someone that administers treatments with radio waves.
Toilet. Lavatory, water closet (WC), what Americans call a bathroom. It’s what an Englishman shits in. George Michael loved the ones in Beverly Hills.
Home Counties. The counties contiguous to Greater London – Starting at 12 o’clock and going anti clockwise, that’s Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Surrey, Kent and Essex. Some people would include East and West Sussex, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire – but they’re wrong. I’m not getting into a debate about this.
Peppa Pig. British cartoon star, beloved by toddlers. Might be the only show with a longer intro and outro than the content. If you jump in muddy puddles…. you must wear your boots, etc etc. Oink.
Harold Shipman. GP. Did a bit for the pensions deficit, but the WI missed out on a few years of subs too. Danny Dyer, the famous English poet would call him a proper naughty slag.
WI. Women’s Institute. A membership organisation for women, usually older women. Jam enthusiasts.
Jam. What Americans call jelly. It’s stewed fruit and sugar mixed with pectin and cooled in a jar.
Sexual Health clinic. Also clap clinic, dose centre, slop shop, STD clinic, STI clinic, home of the provincial walk of shame, where they swab your fun zone for evidence of your sexual misdemeanours
Plasterer’s radio. Plastering, or the art of applying plaster or render to walls is very messy work. It gets everywhere, including in all the pores of a tradesman’s radio that he likes to bring to customer sites. In this context however, it’s an English phrase to describe what a lady looks like when covered in semen.
**clearly not ruling out gay men here, (I mean, I am personally) but not from the use of the phrase.
Spaffing. Usually used to describe the art of spraying something all over the place. See plasterers radio and anything on the profligate, historical public spending by the Labour Party, and more recently, the Conservative Party.
Wank. A do it yourself, hand assisted orgasm.
Cheeky wank. The fastest possible version of the wank, preferably in someone else’s house. Or the office. Or someone else’s office.
Wank bank. A selection of images and short visual anecdotes stored in the brain, typically based on historical events, used to summon up the urge for a wank, or cheeky wank.
Little Johnny. See cock
Fun zone. Entire groin region, easily interchanged for both males and females.
Business district. See fun zone.
Whack a mole. a classic arcade game which you try and hit moles which pop up out of the ground with a big mallet. Has also gained recognition more recently, when Boris Johnson used it to describe the UK’s coronavirus policy. Equally frustrating.
Bosh. Most literally translated as there it is. As in whoop – there it is. The French might say et voila. In Suffolk we say oohwah. In the north, they have been known to say ‘ave it.
On my tits. This means that something is irritating you. It typically bears no relation to the plasterers radio in this context.
CSA. Child Support Agency. A British government body dedicated to tracking down absent fathers and relieving them of their cash to fund the children they’ve run away from. (Not a sweeping assumption, it was part of a joke – stop crying, I don’t care)
Billy Big Bollocks. A very senior physician indeed, in the very top tier of their profession. Swagger.
The Wash. The body of water separating the English counties of Norfolk and Lincolnshire. Cambridgeshire too probably.
Pants. This is very important. Pants are underwear, they go on under your trousers. A “pant suit” is not an appropriate form of dress in the united kingdom unless you are a toddler. Pants are NOT trousers. Have a fucking word with yourselves.
Pebble Mill. The home of BBC daytime entertainment for many years in the 1980’s. A legend of British broadcasting. I think it was in Birmingham, which is reason enough for it to have been demolished 30 years ago.
Joking! (rite bab)
Coronacation. A forced, lengthy national holiday, paid for by your unborn grandchildren
Sainsbury’s. A British supermarket where you do the big shop. Orange. Better than Tesco, not as good as Waitrose.
Waitrose. A British supermarket where you do the big shop. Green. Better than anything else, apart from M&S food for the fresh stuff. Some people complain that Waitrose is expensive, but they don’t shop there.
M&S Food. Where you do the little shop, for things like ham. The food department of Marks and Spencer.
24 hours in A&E. The pinnacle of medical reality shows, where a camera crew follows some real people and their families around following a huge trauma. Traditionally set at St Georges in London, but goes to other major trauma centres too. Incredible show.
Joe Wickes. Chirpy little fucker, the nation’s PE teacher, absolutely brilliant during the first lockdown in the UK, stepping up to keep our kids fit on TV every morning.
PE. That’s Physical Education, PT or Gym for our American audience. For kids that went to school in the 80’s it conjures up misty eyed images of doing it in your “knickers and socks” when you forgot your kit. Black Dunlop plimsolls were almost universal. 20 ft ladders, ropes and a concrete floor which resulted in serious injury if you fell. Banned, like pretty much everything else fun was in the UK, between 1997 and 2010.
Willycopters. The art of swinging your penis in a clockwise or anti clockwise fashion. The objective is to mimic the rotors of a helicopter. Usually taught by men to their sons as soon as they are out of nappies.
Pebble dash. An external home cladding, once popular in some parts of the UK. Typically found in parts of the country where the streets only have numbers. Small pebbles, stuck to a house, sometimes painted. Went the same way as Artex, Woodchip wallpaper, Crazy paving, Asbestos and the British mining industry.
Tea. I just know this has the potential to be controversial, but Tea is the main evening meal. It can be consumed at any point after the whole family is normally home. Some people call it dinner, these people are wrong. That includes my wife and both children.
Hum’s and Har’s. An Anglian’s art of procrastinating in public.