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).

[firiel44.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

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

[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!