The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..
Chatter Box
This of course remains a commonly used phrase today, but I did like the quite vivid definition given by the dictionary, which was “one whose tongue runs twelve score to the dozen, a chattering man or woman”. When the dictionary was published, this was a relatively new phrase as it had only started to be used in the 1770s. It was originally two words, but it has been corrupted down into one over the years.
I think I prefer the dictionary definition than the word it’s describing, I will definitely attempt to get the phrase “your tongue runs twelve score to the dozen” in somewhere this year.