Sibford Vocabulary

Introduction

Any closed social group can start to develop "in house" vocabulary. This is very common in families and Sibford school is no exception. This page is an attempt to write down some expressions and vocabulary that are exclusive to Sibford. You will probably find that some words have perfectly normal explanations and they are not "in house" at all.

Grollies

Underpants, especially smelly ones. eg "I have run out of clean grollies because I forgot to put them in the laundry bag". Note: In the 1970's boys had all their washing done but girls had to wash their own "smalls"

Quis? Ego

If you want to give something away for free you would shout Quis? Anyone who said Ego would get it. I am no expert on Latin but Quis means who and Ego means I.

They have knicked my casuals

If you were caught smoking they would confiscate you own clothes for about 3 weeks. Your own clothes were called casuals. So for 3 weeks you would have to go around in your school uniform. You would be able to show off your truth (trouthe), honor, freedom, and courtesy (curteisye) badge for 3 weeks.

Let's go to the hop!

For some reason they called the party on Saturday night which had music and dancing was called a Hop.

Groin Grinding

The last dance at the Hop was probably Nights in White Satin. If you were lucky you could dance with someone you fancied and do a sort of low level stand up dry hump.

Exeat

An exeat is a formal, authorized leave of absence from a British boarding school, university, or religious institution. Commonly, it refers to a scheduled "exeat weekend" where the school closes, allowing students to leave for a break, usually from Friday to Sunday, to visit home or host families.

Prep

In a boarding school prep is like homework. Every evening everone has to sit in a room for an hour and do their homework or prep. In the 70s it was one hour but the fifth formers had to do 90 minutes.

Embracing

This meant any kind of kissing or hanky panky. The headmaster was embarressed to speak directly about amorous contact between the sexes so he would refer to this as embracing.

Wotcha

This was the typical greeting. Meaning Hi, how are you!

To be in the San

Sibfords had a sort of hospital and if you were really ill you could sleep in the San. San is probably short for Sanitorium. To get in the San you would have to go there before breakfast. If you got there without a coat they would send you away even if you were delerious with fever. I have heard about flu epidemics where they would put all people suffering from flu into one of the houses. This would be a very unusual.

A der brain

Someone not very intelligent.

The "thicky center"

The remedial education unit. I would not include this here but the only people who every used the term "thicky center" were the people who went to it themselves. Maybe like only black people are allowed to use the "n" word.

A day book

A fairly rough notebook made with cheap paper which was used to take notes. For many years the distribution was carried out my teachers like Doss (Mr Gildchrist) or Beak (Mr Francis)

To bunk a meeting

Fifth formers and above were supposed to go to the meeting house in Sibford Gower on Sunday mornings. Many people "bunked the meeeting" meaning did not go. However, it would be necesary to hide out somewhere, maybe smoking cigarettes in a field somewhere between Sibford Ferris and Sibfords Gower. The conversation of people "bunking" a meeting would often be about religious topics so maybe it was not too much of a transgression. Bunking evening meeting on a Sunday was a much more serious issue.

The dip

An area of the playing field about 100 metres from the staff room. As long as you were lying down nobody could see you. Aparently Mr Skeath had some binoculars and could spot wrong doing. If you were in the "dip" you were safe.

Night attire

Quite a good way of refering to what you wear in bed without going into specifics.