Will Chalk

Or even boraccio for a drunkard.

They're all words found in the first English dictionary of slang, which was published in 1699 by an anonymous author.

A rare first edition of the book, called A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, is about to come up for auction.

Its contents were apparently aimed at helping the more polite classes learn the language and methods of the thieves, beggars and cheats of London.

With more on the significance of this book, here is Jonathan Green.

He's the author of a more modern slang dictionary.

It's a very important dictionary because it's essentially the first dictionary, although you mentioned crime, to bring in non-crime stuff.

Now, they wouldn't have been there in earlier collections of slang.

The interesting thing, of course, is we don't know who did it.

All we know is it's by somebody called B.E., that's his initials, Gent, as in gentleman.

But as the centuries go by, there have evolved nearly 2,000 synonyms for that.

It's a repository of synonyms, of many ways of saying what is essentially the same thing.

Definitely not a ninny hammer.

That is lexicographer Jonathan Green.

It's been quite a week.

the international order underpinned by the nato military alliance that's prevailed since the end of the second world war has never looked more shaky relations between the trump administration and european governments are fragile and as we heard earlier president trump's comments about nato allies in afghanistan have put them under further strain

But it was the threat to take Greenland by force that really shook the foundations.

For the moment, at least, Mr Trump says that's off the table, but it was enough to prompt the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to warn that the whole edifice was already coming down.

There was, he said, a rupture, not a transition in the rule-based international order.

So how worried should we be?