Gloss 0201

Chapter 2 — Section 1
	UK	US-h	US-p
Pages	32-35	35-37	26-28
POV	Nancy
Where	streets of Glasthule
When	Wednesday lunchtime, May 5 1915

colloguing — gossiping. ((collogue: "confer privately and confidentially; to confabulate" colloquial or humorous – OED.))
lookat — (("interjection used to emphasise what follows" – Slanguage.))
get-up — outfit, general appearance. ((colloquial – Partridge HS.))
dinky — in the informal sense of "small and cute", not the American sense of "small and undesirable". ((OED.))
Bandbox – used for storing hats, etc
out of a bandbox — ((to look as if one came out of a bandbox: "to look extremely smart and neat" – OED.)) (("he is so neat and precise, so carefully got up in his dress and person, that he looks like some company dress, carefully kept in a bandbox" – Brewer 1898.))
knickers — knee-breeches. (("contraction of knickerbockers" colloquial – OED.))
longers — long trousers. ((Dublin slang – Jackeen.com.)) (("one of those large boys who still wore short trousers when they should long have graduated into longers" – The Recorder: a journal of the American Irish Historical Society, 1985.))
anatomicals — ? sexual equipment, sexual capacity. ((anatomical: "bawdy, sexual" from ca. 1920 – Partridge.)) (The girls' talk seems scattered with sexual innuendo.)
greens — as in "green vegetables", good for growing bodies. But also ((greens: "sexual sport, esp. coition" low colloquial – Partridge HS.)) ((greens: "longings, desire" – Farmer 1904.)) ((get one's greens: "to enjoy, procure, or confer the sexual favour" – Farmer 1904.))
wee spurt — ? little fellow, but with innuendo on ejaculation.
Dean Farrar, "Eric, or Little by Little", 1858
little by little — ? reference to Frederic W. Farrar's 1858 novel "Eric, or, Little by Little" (("one of the most popular boys' books in Victorian Britain. It deals with the descent into moral turpitude of a boy at a boarding school".))
baked for shame — ? overcome with shame. ((baked: "done up, exhausted" – Farmer 1904.))
smacker — (("a loud kiss" – EDD.))
saucepot — an impudent person. ((1998 – Routledge Slang.))
ignorant — rude, the usual meaning in Ireland. (("badly behaved, bad-mannered, uncouth" – Slanguage.)) (("ill-mannered" – EDD.))
muck for luck — (("catchphrase addressed to someone getting his boots soiled with dog's excrement, or similarly befouled" – Partridge HS.))
national school — in Ireland at the time, a public but denominational school for children up to 12 years of age. Irish National School.
flying — doing very well. (("in good form" – DHE.))
mashy — flirtatious, amorous. ((Partridge HS.)) something desperate — to an extreme degree. ((desperate: "very bad" – Slanguage.)) The adverbial "something", serving merely as an intensifier, is common in IE.
S.W.A.K. — (("'sealed with a kiss' on the back of an envelope" – Partridge HS.)) return — ? short for "return address".
ox-eyed — (("having large full eyes like those of an ox" – Webster 1913.))
scrapes — trouble. (("embarrassing or awkward predicament" – OED.))
bold particle — ? bold in an elementary way. ((bold: "forward, impudent" – PWJ 1910.)) This is the usual meaning of the word in Ireland: children, for instance, tend to be "bold" rather than "naughty". Particle — ? possibly fashioned on "elementary particle". It's an unusual usage of the word.
let on — (("betray, admit" colloquial – Farmer 1904.))
slice of the ignore — ? a serving of ignorance (in the IE sense of "rudeness". cf "ignorant" above.)
let him stew — leave him to worry on his own. ((stew in one's own juice: "be left vindictively or resentfully alone" – Farmer 1904.)) ((stew: "be left to suffer the natural consequences of one's own actions" – OED.))
hussies — girls (("of the lower orders" – OED.))