I hope you’ve enjoyed discovering some of the yucky, weird and WONDERFUL stories behind some of our most innocent-looking words! I thought it would be fun to finish off with a story featuring some of the words from this book — the catch is that I’m going to use their original meanings rather than the ones we know today! See if you can make sense of it — maybe you could even try writing one yourself.

And above all, always remember: words are NEVER quite what they seem…

 

Jack just managed to avoid a lasagne that was being emptied from a window above him as he walked to school. His mind was full of the scary dreams he’d had the night before, when geeks had been doing grotty things in front of a huge crowd. Luckily, they’d been given the thumbs up and were exploded off the stage, but the very thought of it was enough to make Jack fizzle and squirt. Just like that mistletoe bird, he thought (or the partridge, he remembered with a snigger).

As he passed a fruit stall, Jack saw a thug wielding a sword with his sinister hand and thrilling a sack of potatoes — practising for his real victims, Jack thought with a shudder. He grabbed a grenade from the stall and threw it at the man before running off towards the local stew — he could always hide in there if he needed to, and it would do his sense of humour some good.

When the thug had finally gone, Jack ran out past the local barber, spotting the blood on the floor — eurgh. Even the doctor next door was treating a patient with a frog in his throat. The butcher’s wasn’t much better: the smell of puddings drifted through the door and made Jack’s arms go quite horrible. It was a right shambles.

What a morning. At least, Jack reminded himself, he was free — not like boys. And, even if he did sometimes run into fans and ferocious treacles, things could be a lot worse. He smiled to himself, and decided to peer into the windows of the local gymnasium for a laugh: even berserk people looked a bit silly in there!