i  have to admit, I am a junky. I am addicted to the Oxford English Dictionary, and I’m lucky enough to have access. One of these days, when I finally settle down in one place and have scads of money, I’m going to get all seventeen volumes. Really.

For now, though, I delight myself with looking things up. For instance, I just verified that “my eye!” would have been appropriate Regency-speak. As would “That’s all my eye.” Or even “That’s all my eye and my elbow.”

Looking up things in the OED also points out some consistent mistakes that I see. One common mistake I see is with regards to the phrase “scandal broth.” I was thinking about using it, so I popped it into the OED. The way I’ve seen it most often used in historical romance is as it’s used here and here: “She had to beware lest she land in some scandal broth.”
From which you can conclude that scandal broth is—what? Like some kind of soup, made of scandal, and the deeper you are in scandal broth, the more the gossips talk?

But no. Scandal broth is tea. As in, it’s broth for scandals. You get around and drink tea and gossip. You can’t land in scandal broth. Scandal broth, also called cat lap and chatter broth. As far as I can tell, scandal broth isn’t even itself scandalous.

And this seems to be supported by The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

How about you? Are there any references you just can’t write without?

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