WORD-COINING AND SLANG. [To THE EDITOR Or SHE S.M.:FOR:1 SIR, — Ifl
your article " Word-Coining and Slang" in last week's Spectator you speakpf the expression " to fire otft " as if it were American. But I do not think it is. You will find Shakespeare using it very seriously in Sonnet CXLIV., "Two loves I have," &c., as thus:-
" Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good one out."
It seems as if the verb must mean "to expel forcibly, as from a gun" ; but would Shakespeare have applied such a metaphor
to a contest between a celestial and an infernal being P I am rather surprised that your article contains no reference to the rhyming slang of the East End, that ingenious and amusing argot in which "Charlie Prescott" stands for one article of dress, and "round the 'ouses " for another. It cannot be called a literary language, but I have read some verses not without merit, which begin :— " As I sat by the side of the Anna Maria, Warming my plates of meat,
I heard a knock at the Rory O'More That made my raspberry beat"
Badminton Club, 100 Piccadilly, W.
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