20181217

10 words or phrases in Dickens' Christmas Carol


1. Bedight - Adorned (and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.)
2. Norfolk Biffins - Red apples ( there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons,)
3. Smoking Bishop - form of mulled wine (we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob!)
4. Total abstinence principle - a phrase commonly associated with teetotalling, ie never drinking any alcohol or "spirits" - it's a pun (He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards;)
5. Apoplectic opulence - apoplexy involves becoming unconscious or incapacitated. Here it is due to opulence, wealth or luxury (tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence)
6. Retire to Bedlam -  Bedlam was a well known lunatic asylum in London where you would spend your final years if you were insane (There's another fellow, my clerk with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas; I'll retire to Bedlam.)
7. Counting house - an office or building in which the accounts and money of a person or company were kept (eg on Christmas Eve - old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house)
8. Comforter -  a woollen scarf (eg Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle)
9. Forfeits - this is a parlour game where a piece of clothing or some personal belonging is put into a pile on the floor and can only be redeemed by doing something silly, as decided by a judge. (After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.)
10 The word scrooge originally meant to squeeze.