I’ll take 1800s Slang for $500

“I think we’re getting into a weird area here.” Those words were spoken by Bill Murray to Dustin Hoffman in the movie Tootsie. The same words popped into my head the other day as I was researching 1800s slang.

Here’s the set-up: I have two trappers, living out in the wilds during the winter. They’ve just gotten drunk toasting the New Year and one of them stands and says, “I gotta urinate.” Except a trapper wouldn’t have used the term “urinate,” he would have used something rougher and more vulgar. Which sent me looking for time-appropriate potty terms. “See a man about a horse” doesn’t work. “Spend a penny” doesn’t work, either, because they didn’t show up in normal parlance till the second half of the 19th century—and my story takes place in 1844 or thereabouts. “Wee” and “wee-wee” don’t come into use until the early 1900s. “Tinkle” became popular in 1960. (And what self-respecting trapper would stand up and say, “I gotta take a tinkle”?) “Take a whiz” originated in 1971. “Take a leak” doesn’t work, either. Shakespeare used the verb “leak” in his play Henry IV (“then we leak in your chimney”), but “take a leak” didn’t come into popular use until 1918 according to my slang handbook. Finally, after I was thoroughly grossed out by some of the vulgarisms I’d inadvertently been exposed to, I discovered that “piss” was a perfectly acceptable term in the 1800s. It comes from the Old French word pisser and has been around since the 13th century. Did I use it? No. By that point, I decided my character was such a unique person that I figured he’d use a quirky phrase of his own creation, something no one else would say. So he says, “I gotta go melt some snow.” And he leaves the tent.

Whew. It was a lot of work for exactly nothing, but it was fascinating, too. My next research task? Finding hymns that existed before 1844. Hopefully that won’t be quite as challenging. Or gross!