
This week’s obscure English word is wheeze. The formal dictionary meaning is ‘breathing with a rasping sound’. However, it also has a more obscure meaning. In British slang it also means a joke, or some witty and clever scheme, often one intended to prank somebody or to be hilarious of itself.
As far as I’m aware it was commonly used in British boarding schools by the kids who inevitably spent much of their time devising clever wheezes to discomfit the beaks (er… teachers).
Your challenge: write a sentence or two in the comments using ‘wheeze’ in its obscure British sense.
Copyright © Matthew Wright 2022
As a Brit, I find it a bit of a wheeze to call wheeze obscure…
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Definitely a good wheeze to try though…
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Channeling Billy Bunter in the Boarding School, Matthew?
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Pretty much! 🙂
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“It’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsie in snide.” Any questions or reply? 😕
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