How to Talk Like a Local by Susie Dent

Author:Susie Dent
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781409061946
Publisher: Random House

k

kappa slapper

A YOUNG WOMAN in trendy clothes and flashy jewellery (northern England)

Kappa slapper is the only one of the synonyms and near-synonyms of chav (with the exception of charva) which specifically denotes a female. It is, however, not so much a regional word as a regional marker. It isn’t distinctively used in one region or another, but it is used fairly widely. It is often used to designate northerners. All of these features stem from its unusual origin. Kappa Slappa was a short-lived character in the magazine Viz (which is produced in Newcastle); she was a young Newcastle woman who lived the life and wore the clothes associated with the urban youth subculture. Her name was based on that of the well-known Italian sportswear company Kappa, plus slapper, slang for ‘a promiscuous woman’. She was, in effect, a satirical caricature of a female charver and first appeared in the magazine at the end of 1997 (the year that charver is first recorded). The name was changed to Tasha Slappa, apparently after a complaint from Kappa, but by then the genie was out of the bottle. By 1999 the term had been picked up from London to Edinburgh, partly to describe local Kappas, and partly to describe the subculture as a characteristic phenomenon of northern cities.

See THE CHAVS AND THE CHAV-NOTS, and also CHARVER, CHAV, JANNER, NED, PIKEY, SCALLY, TROBO

kay-legged

knock-kneed (Yorkshire and Hampshire)

Kay is an old northern word of Scandinavian origin meaning ‘left’ when used of the left hand or (less commonly) the left foot. It is recorded in the medieval poem Gawain and the Green Knight. Kay-pawed and kay-fisted are common northern dialect words for left-handed, both of which can be used to express clumsiness (as in the more standard cack-handed), and kay-legged seems, therefore, to mean ‘having left-handed legs’ with an implicit sense of clumsiness or ungainliness. This transfer of the senses associated with left-handedness may well have been influenced by the earlier jay-legged.

See KNOCK KNOCK, and also JAY-LEGGED, KNAP-KNEED

keepie-back

savings (northern England; especially used in ‘Pitmatic’)

While keepie-back can mean money saved for a rainy day, it could also mean the money earned by miners for overtime, and which was kept hidden by miners for spending on beer and gambling. It was used particularly by the mineworkers in the local pits of Northumberland and Durham, whose dialect has emerged as something distinct from Geordie or Northumbrian thanks to the wonderful lexicon that emerged from the mining communities, known as ‘Pitmatic’.

Kerr-handed

left-handed (Scotland)

The left-handed lexicon is a big one in dialect terms: most of the many synonyms for being a southpaw (a term from baseball referring to left-handed pitchers throwing with their arm facing the south side of the ballpark) are locally specific. Depending on where you are in the country, you can be corrie-handed, Kerr-handed, kay-pawed, cack-handed and caggy-handed. Scotland probably tops the list as the most prolific source of left-handed words. Simon Elmes, while researching Talking for Britain, discovered that within a 14-mile radius in Scotland there are fourteen different variations for being left-handed.

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