In Manchester when I was growing up (in the 70s/80s) we had the nound
Men'lar, (pronounced with some gusto) to refer to anyone (usually male I
think) whose behaviour was dangerously unpredictable.
Helen
PS Oxford's book of 20th century words is organised in decades and makes
interesting reading. There is some slang, but it is not quite so juicy as
the Cassell
----- Original Message -----
From: Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 30, 2000 8:33 PM
Subject: Re: newbie to the list with a cant verse to enjoy
> From: "Peter Howard" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > On Sat, 30 Dec 2000, Mark Weiss wrote...
> >
> > >Robin: My own sense of "mental" = deranged is that it I heard it first
> in
> > >the US when I was working with adolescents from the housing projects in
> New
> > >York's Lower East Side in the '80s and that it's now pretty wide
spread.
> >
> > The Cassell dates "mental" as a noun from the 1910s and as an adjective
> > from the 1920s. I certainly used it/had it used about me when I was a
> > kid (60s/70s) growing up nowhere near Glasgow.
>
> Cassell (admitedly better than Oxford/Slang) still locates the term in the
> area of mental illness. My sense is that the Glasgow usage was closer to
> something like "berserk".
>
> But it does look, from what Mark and Peter say, as if the term was fairly
> widespread, and maybe having different meanings in different areas.
> Independent coinages? But whatever, not well documented. The School of
> Scottish Studies at Edinburgh in (I think) the sixties, attempting to
> preserve The Language of the People decided (may they burn in hell for a
> good long time for the decision) not to document urban (as opposed to
> rural) speech.
>
> But this was before we had "Six Glasgow Poems" and _Lanark_ and _The
> Busconductor Hines_ and _Trainspotting_ ...
>
> More fools them.
>
> Robin Hamilton
>
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