Waiting for the kettle to boil

 

Waiting for the kettle to boil

While decanting tea leaves to the tea caddy I found two cards in the bottom of the Brew Tea Co box. One was about recycling, which was helpful, although the information about tea bags seemed redundant as the tea was loose leaf.

The second card was about ‘retro tea vernacular,’ and had on it three phrases I’ve never heard before.

Apparently from the 1800s, the first was ‘Prattle broth’. Prattle is idle chatter or gossip, and broth is a hot infusion, in this case tea. It was exclusively women who were thought to be involved in this pastime. Other terms from the same period included ‘chatter broth’ and scandal broth.’

The second idiom was a 19^th century expression to indicate excess or extravagance. ‘Butter upon bacon’ has much the same resonance as ‘gilding the lily’ or ‘over-egging the pudding.’ It can occasionally be heard among older generations in Northern England.

The last phrase is ‘nanty narking.’ It originated in the first half of the 19^th century in public house slang, and means having a fantastically enjoyable time, sometimes becoming excessive and riotous.

 ‘Nanty’ may derive from the Italian ‘niente’ for nothing. ‘Nark’ means to annoy or irritate, though it has a secondary meaning of being a snitch or informer. Spelt slightly differently as narc, it is associated with narcotics.