v died. Generally refers to someone who died doing something somewhat dangerous: D’you know Jochen Rindt was the first posthumous Formula One champion? Bought it four races from the end of the 1970 season and still won the bloody thing.

n shit scared: He didn’t do very well in the interview – we felt a bit sorry for him as he was clearly bricking it.

adj popular abbreviation for “brilliant.” Well, popular amongst 1980s adolescents.

adj particularly good: I had a brilliant holiday; What a brilliant night out. It’s a little bit childish — you’d be less likely to refer to a “brilliant board meeting” or a “brilliant shag.” Also carries the usual other meanings (as “gifted” or “luminescent”) in the U.K.

n copious amounts of paperwork or literature: You would not believe the bloody stack of bumf that came with my new video recorder. Possibly derived from the army and a contraction of the phrase “bum fodder,” i.e., toilet paper.

1 v stick; wedge. Push something into something, often something that was not intended for that purpose: Eventually we discovered that it wasn’t working because our son had bunged a Polish sausage into the video recorder. 2 n stopper, often rubber. The type of thing you use to block fluid from coming out of things. 3 n bribe intended to buy silence. A monetary reward given to someone in order to buy their tacit agreement, often associated with the fixing of sports games: Everyone knows that their manager’s taking bungs to throw the matches anyway. 4 – up full of cold; congested: I can’t come into work today, one of the kids is bunged up.

v skip (as in school); play truant: I think I’m just going to bunk off and ride my bike today.

v break into somewhere and nick stuff. Americans have the hilarious word “burglarize,” which means the same thing; for all I know, Yanks might refer to the event as burglarization. Or perhaps not.

v sit in the street playing an instrument and hoping people will give you money. See also “waster.”

n look: Hey, give me a butcher’s at that. ‘From Cockney rhyming slang: “butcher’s hook” / “look.”

clumsy; ineptly executed. Likely derived from a time when the left hand was used for cleaning one’s posterior after movements, and the right hand reserved for anything else. Therefore anything executed with the left hand is perhaps sub-standard. Almost all scatological etymologies are historically false, but they’re more amusing than the polite ones. The sad truth of life is that more of our language derived from the Viking term for “baking tray” than some sort of acronym which spelled “FUCK.”

n merry event where people get together in a field and sell the rubbish from their attic, under the secret suspicion that some part of it might turn out to be splendidly valuable. Not entirely dissimilar to a jumble sale. The term stems no doubt from the fact that this is normally carried out using the boot of your car as a headquarters. This sort of nonsense is now largely replaced by eBay, where you can sell the 1950s engraved brass Hitler moustache replica your father was awarded for twenty years’ service in the post office without actually having to meet the freak who bought it.

adj Northern England great; wonderful: Ooh, those sausages were champion!

interj goodbye. Fairly old-fashioned and light-hearted. Originates from the 1970s, when one of the favourite killing methods of the Welsh mafia was to intravenously inject the victim with breakfast cereal.

interj informal substitute for “thank you.” Somehow derived from its use as an all-purpose toast.

v hurry someone along with something. If you want an example, you can have this: I was pretty sure I’d be up until 1 a.m. daydreaming instead of doing my homework, but my mum chivvied me on with it and I was done fairly early.

adj closely packed together. You might use this to describe your dating schedule or your attic, unless you are unforgivably ugly and you live in a flat, in which case you’d have to think up something else to use it on. The examples here are provided as-is, you know; they don’t necessarily work for everyone. It’s possible that the word has a quite unfortunate origin — it may have originally referred to the area where black slaves were once lined up on blocks to be sold. It’s also possible that it stems from maritime usage, referring to when a block and tackle were jammed against each other to stop the load moving.

adj generally happy with life. Make sure you only use this word in the correct tense and familiarise yourself with the meaning of the word “chuff,” too (see previous entry). For antonym see “dischuffed”.

v thumb one’s nose. A display of contempt, normally expressed at some sort of authority: Between you and me, I think the eight-foot bronze penis Harry made was less about art and more about cocking a snook at Norwich City Council.

v fool around; mess about: Where the heck’s Bob? / I think he’s in the garage cocking about with that ridiculous jet-powered go-kart that he bought on eBay.