Yenork, a crown piece, or five shillings.
Flatch-yenork, half-a-crown. This is generally slurred into “flatch-a-nock.” The crown in full rarely receives the title “yenork” nowadays,—it is usually a “wheel” or “evif gen.”
Flatch a dunop, ten shillings, i.e., half a pound.
Beyond this amount the slangist reckons after an intricate and complicated mode. Fifteen shillings would be “erth-evif-gen,” or, literally, three times 5s.; seventeen and sixpence would be “erth-yenork-flatch,” or three crowns and a half; or, by another mode of reckoning, “erth-evif-gen flatch-yenork,” i.e., three times 5s., and half-a-crown.
Dunop, a pound. Varied by “Dick,” back slang for “quid.”
Further than which the costermonger seldom goes in money reckoning.
In the following Glossary only those words are given which are continually used,—the terms connected with street traffic, the names of the different coins, vegetables, fruit, and fish, technicalities of police courts, &c. The reader might naturally think that a system of speech so simple as the back slang would require no Glossary; but he will quickly perceive, from the specimens given, that a great many words in frequent use in a “back” sense, have become so twisted as to require a little glossarial explanation.
This kind of slang, formed by reversing and transposing the letters of a word, is not peculiar to the London costermongers. Instances of an exactly similar secret dialect are found in the Spanish “Germania” and French “Argot.” Thus:—
| Spanish. | Germania. | English. |
| Plato. | Taplo. | Plate. |
| Demia. | Media. | Stockings. |
| French. | Argot. | English. |
| F’ol. | Loffe. | Foolish. |
| Lorcefe. | La Force. | La Force, the prison of that name. |
The Bazeegars, a wandering tribe of jugglers in India, form a back slang, on the basis of the Hindustanee, in the following manner:—
| Hindustanee. | Bazeegar. | English. |
| Ag. | Ga. | Fire. |
| Lamba. | Balum. | Long. |
| Dum. | Mudu. | Breath. |