SIR COURTLY NICE.

Another language-related blog has come to my attention (thanks, Paul!): Sir Courtly Nice, "Meditations upon the twisty highways and byways of the English language." The blog title is peculiarly applicable to the latest post (from last August—it doesn't seem to be updated very often), Dibbles, Strunts and Dick Emery, of which our courtly blogger says:

I recently chanced across this rather peculiar sketch (I believe from the 1970s), which formed part of the Dick Emery Show. The joke here is that a prudish vicar tries to avoid using words that might have double meanings by inventing meaningless words. His daughter’s boyfriend, however, happens to be an expert on 17th and 18th century slang and he realises that the vicar’s ‘meaningless’ words are, in fact, much ruder than the words they replace.

The link to the six-minute clip is followed by a discussion of the words in question, only two of which I had been familiar with.

Posted by languagehat at January 20, 2012 08:36 PM