Re: Slang attack

In article <488fae4b$0$7354$607ed4bc@xxxxxx>,
John W Kennedy <jwkenne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Graham Woodland wrote:
I've just hit a passage in the WIP where the *precisely* right remark
for Prince Charming to make is, 'I should cocoa!'. Most Londoners, at
least, will know instantly what this means, and it's fairly apparent
from context that it is an emphatic agreement; but I'm not sure how
widely it's familiar, and I'm curious as to how transparent/gibberishish
it appears to my fellow groomers of cats.

I'm from the US Northeast, and fairly proficient in Old Blightyish, but
it is wholly unfamiliar to me. My /guess/ is, "I should withdraw now to
the kitchen and prepare some cocoa for the two of us" (perhaps only
metaphorically), but it's no more than a guess -- and if you assume
familiarity with Chesterton's "The Song of Right and Wrong"
(<URL:http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/8677/), it reverses completely.
(Chesterton had a bitter personal quarrel with George Cadbury.)

Did he really?????

"Tea, although an Oriental,
Is a gentleman at least;
Cocoa is a cad and coward,
Cocoa is a vulgar beast...."

But of course, according to what I've read, that is English-style
cocoa, which is (or was, in the first half of the 20th C at least)
made with *water*, not milk. Which personally I would call
neither cadly nor cowardly nor vulgar, but certainly wimpy.

Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt@xxxxxxxxxxx
.