Vocabulary geekery.

[castalia]

New words learned today: skittles, bar skittles, and skittle-sharp.

Nope, nothing to do with the bright colored candies called Skittles. Actually, it makes me wonder about the origin of the name for those, now.

Skittles was, evidently, a Victorian game oftentimes played in a bar or pub setting. It looked something like this when used as a parlor game, though in pubs it seems to have been played much like bowling, with an alley with the pins (skittles) at one end and a bowler at the other. Not sure about rules, but it must not be quite the same thing as ninepins, as I keep seeing the two mentioned distinctly from each other.

A skittle-sharp is much like any other sharp, like a card sharp, but with skittles. It was used thus in my latest bookstore find, a Wodehouse Blandings novel I hadn't yet read, Pigs Have Wings:

It was never an easy matter to disconcert the Hon. Galahad. For half a century nursemaids, governesses, tutors, schoolmasters, Oxford dons, bookmakers, three-card-trick men, jellied eel sellers, skittle sharps, racecourse touts and members of the metropolitan police force had tried to do it, and all had failed.

I do so love Wodehouse. It's the best repository of knowledge regarding 1920s-1930s slang, idioms, and culture one could ever want.

Comments

[icepixie]

They actually still have skittle alleys in many pubs in the southwest (mostly Devon and Cornwall). It's a lot like bowling mixed with skeeball, as far as I could gather (I never played, and never really saw it being played, just the alleys themselves).

[castalianspring.livejournal.com]

Now that makes me wish we'd gone into a pub while I was in Devon and Plymouth with some friends. Would've been interesting to see!

[firiel44.livejournal.com]

That would be the perfect little time-waster to have on your desk. A wee bowling alley all to yourself!

[castalianspring.livejournal.com]

Too true! I'd so play with it for hours on end.

[yunitsa.livejournal.com]

The Sheep's Heid pub in Duddington, Edinburgh has the oldest working skittle alley in the world (or possibly Scotland)! I don't know enough about nine-pin bowling to know what the differences are, only that I'm rather bad at both.

[castalianspring.livejournal.com]

How neat. I see lots of links saying they're trying to revive it. I'm rubbish at bowling in general, though.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Skittles goes back a lot further than 'Victorian' times.

[castalianspring.livejournal.com]

Does it? Most of the links I found were lumping it in with the Victorian games. Perhaps it was just the most popular then.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Certainly it goes back to the 16th century in something like its current form. I found one reference to a skittle like game in Germany in the 3rd century.

[chazzbanner.livejournal.com]

"Life's not all beer and skittles"

Off Topic

[antjgiab3.livejournal.com]

I thought of a name starting with "A" for the octopus coming home from Bling! last night. Not sure why it popped into my head, maybe I read it in a previous post somewhere? Anyway... "Andromeda" is what I thought of. If that hasn't been selected and you like it, claim it as your own and name that octopus! It was good seeing you and Shanola. Sorry I wasn't up to snuff and ended up a stick in the mud. You guys looked great!

Re: Off Topic

[castalianspring.livejournal.com]

That's a cute name! I'll have to look in the volunteer room and see if the suggestion box is still up. I'm glad you could make the party, though I'm sorry you weren't feeling well. It was quite the weekend for sickness, sadly.