In 1909, after decades collecting clippings of linguistic curiosities, James Redding Ware published Passing English of the Victorian Era: A Dictionary of Heterodox English, Slang, and Phrase — one of the most characterful reference works in the English language. Joyce drew on it when writing Ulysses; the OED cites it over 150 times. This abridged edition distils the liveliest of Ware’s 4,000-plus entries, steered by his own wish that no entry be “quite too dull”. Even reduced, a world exhales from these pages. And much of it laced with alcohol: the book is awash with terms for drink and drunkenness. Petty crime also plays its part, as does casual insult and flirtation, food, the music hall, anxieties of class, and the continual need to name things briskly in a crowded city. The Victorian world in its own unruly voice.

Among the gems within:

• Got the Morbs (temporary melancholia)
• Doing the Bear (courting that involves hugging)
• Nanty Narking (great fun)
• Orf Chump (no appetite)
• Cast an Optic (to look)
• Bags O’Mystery (sausages)
• Kodak (to surreptitiously obtain shape-information)