Top 10 Favorite British Words
def: a stupid person
ety: Prat probably comes from the 16th century slang prat meaning "buttocks."
#2 TWEE
d: affectedly or excessively dainty, delicate, cute, or quaint
e: Twee is a baby-talk alteration of sweet. It first appeared in print in a 1905 issue of the British magazine Punch.
#3 KNACKERED
d: exhausted
e: The slang knacker means "to kill or tire." Etymologists can't be sure if there's a link between the adjective knackered and the knacker that means "horse-slaughterer."
#4 JIGGERY-POCKERY
d:dishonest or suspicious activity; nonsense
e:Jiggery-pokery is an alteration of joukery-pawkery. Both joukeryand pawkery are English regionalisms for "trickery."
#5 PLONK
d: cheap wine
e: Plonk is a shortening of the earlier plink-plonk, and it may be a modification of vin blanc, which means "white wine" in French
#6 CHUNTER
d: mutter
e: Chunter is sometimes used as a synonym of "complain." The word is probably imitative in origin: when people are chuntering, it sounds a bit like they're saying "chunter chunter." (Mutter is also imitative.)
#7 WHINGE
d: whine
e: Whinge (short "i" and terminal "j" sound) predates the long "i"whine. The Old English ancestor of whinge meant "to moan."
#8 GORMLESS
d: lacking intelligence: stupid
e: The word gaum exists in some English dialects and means "attention or understanding." Someone without gaum (or gorm) lacks understanding.
#9 BOFFIN
d: a scientific expert and especially one involved in technological research
e: Boffin dates to 1945. Although its origin remains a mystery, it may have originated as a slang term for scientists engaged in wartime efforts.
#10 PUKKA
d: genuine, authentic; first-class
e: Chef Jamie Oliver rejuvenated pukka with his BBC series Pukka Tukka. That's fitting, since pukka comes from the Hindi and Urdu words for "cooked," "ripe," and "solid."
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