Did you know that . . . a soldier's biggest social blunder is called
jack brew - making yourself a cuppa without making one for anyone
else? That twitchers have an expression for a bird that can't be
identified - LBJ (the letters stand for Little Brown
Job)? Or that builders call plastering the ceiling doing Lionel
Richie's dancefloor? Susie Dent does.
Ever wondered why football managers all speak the same way, what a
cabbie calls the Houses of Parliament, or how ticket inspectors
discreetly request back-up? We are surrounded by hundreds of tribes,
each speaking their own distinct slanguage of colourful words, jokes and
phrases, honed through years of conversations on the battlefield, in
A&E, backstage, or at ten-thousand feet in the air.
Susie Dent has spent years interviewing hundreds of professionals,
hobbyists and enthusiasts, and the result is an idiosyncratic phrasebook
like no other. From the Freemason's handshake to the publican's banter,
Dent's Modern Tribes takes us on a whirlwind tour of Britain, decoding
its secret languages and, in the process, finds out what really makes us
all tick.