Jiggery-pokery and codswallop: the slang of yesterday

Sometimes I think our parents had a lot of slang terms, colloquialisms, that made their language much more colourful than the pale version we speak today.

In an era when all-pervasive television and videos spread the seeds of fads far and wide, we seem to have reduced everything to the lowest common denominator—including slang. Thus “duh!” has become an all-purpose grunt that can mean almost anything the grunter wants it to.

It wasn’t always that way.

I was chatting recently with Oliver Swan, the business manager for Local 7 of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen. We were talking about how the masonry restoration work on Parliament Hill might be phased.

There is a need, Swan said, for work be spread out so there is always the capacity to get it done, while ensuring enough work to encourage would-be apprentices to enter the trade.

But, he said, “if we have political jiggery-pokery with the contracts here…then we will lose those guys” to areas where there is more work.

Jiggery-pokery. It’s an expression that I heard regularly as I was growing up, but hadn’t heard for many years. I knew at once what Swan meant, but I’m not sure how many people younger than me have even heard it.

It sent me to my dictionaries (writers tend to have several), and all agreed that jiggery-pokery is a (usually) British expression meaning deceitful or dishonest dealing or trickery.

When my father heard a political speech, he was apt to dismiss most of it as “a lot of jiggery-pokery.” If my mother saw a product advertising claim she thought dubious, she immediately tagged it “jiggery-pokery.”

But there were a lot of other expressions their generation used that were expressive but are no longer current.

If my grandfather had heard the same political speech my father deemed jiggery-pokery, he might have deemed it “a lot of codswallop,” and the politician himself to be a “right proper twit.”

A contractor in the small town where we lived found most of his clients elsewhere. Few locals would hire him because he was thought to be a “flim-flam man.”

The sales pitch of a door-to-door salesman was dismissed as “a lot of hocus pocus.” Sometimes a radio host was said to be speaking “jabberwocky,” a reference to a nonsense poem in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.

Some powerful people surround themselves with yes-men. Some older folks would call them toadies. To my dad they would have been lickspittles.

My wife recalls a favourite university professor who, when confronted with still more undergraduate nonsense, would pronounce it “bish-bosh.” I once had a philosophy professor who, when a student seemed too sure of himself, would cock his head to one side, smile and say (in his Scottish brogue): “Now laddie are ye sure ye’re correct?” Persist in your view and you were likely to be told you were serving the class “a dish of soggy pudding.”

We’ve got a provincial election coming up soon in Ontario, and a federal election could come whenever the practitioners of the black art of politics (on both sides of the House of Commons), decide they might be able to win it. So we’re going to hear a lot of jabberwocky from a lot of flim-flam men eager to serve us a lot of soggy pudding. And that’s why people like Oliver Swan need to remain alert to the possibility of jiggery-pokery.

There is a lot to be said for an even flow of work—not only federal government work here in Ottawa, but any work that can be phased over time. That way contractors can keep their work forces busy, and new tradesmen can be trained to replace those retiring. Step by step. Nice and orderly.

It can’t happen, though, if work is called (or not called) only if someone perceives a political advantage to be gained. That would be jiggery-pokery.

And to that, I say bish-bosh!

Korky Koroluk is an Ottawa-based freelance writer. Send comments to editor@dailycommercialnews.com