Introduction to Beavish

At some stage in early 2004, I realised that my friends and I had more or less developed our own slang. Sometimes it was merely a way of speaking where the slang changed with each conversation but because we knew each other well, we knew what we meant. In my wisdom, I decided it would be fun to note down some of these phrases.

As I went, my friends and I added and made up slang on the spot. Soon, with just about every conversation, we had come up with something new. Some of it was very obviously contrived but fun nevertheless. And we found that the more obscure, the better. We thought we were so clever. Now, as of December, 2004, this is the list.

For most of its gestation, Beavish was merely known by the moniker “The Language” but at some stage my colleague-in-Beavish Paul Clare decided it should be named after me as I was the one collecting and cataloguing the various disparate parts that make up the whole. And besides, Beavish, I admitted to him, does have a good ring to it.

The only thing that remains is to spread the word and get people everywhere saying they don’t want to “salt the watermelon” but they will have to “get their brace on” and “check for parsley”. And so forth. Already people (when I say people, I mean a select group of family and friends) are starting to debate various Beavishisms and even whether or not it is a dialect or slang. One person has suggested it is a “slanguage”.

Something I find very interesting about this list is that some of these phrases are very specific to certain situations and occasionally we have shortened what takes several sentences to explain into a couple of words. That’s something to think about while you sift through this evidence.

So I hope you enjoy reading this as much as we did while inventing it or while I compiled it. But I very much doubt that, as we are morally and intellectually superior beings.

-- James Beavis, 2005