Bonus: Loutish Lingo and a Group Goodbye

salute you as we better do so. On this episode, we're just wrapping up the season, and one of my favorite things to do with you three was talk about all the research that you did, and I felt like I got to learn a whole lot more about the spirit behind Bridgerton and of course your daily process. So I thought it would be fun to just kind of talk about some of the lingo and all of the beautiful language that you used in Bridgerton with just some

fun Regency slang that was used throughout the show. What was the best Regency insult? I don't know who wrote it, but the writer in season one it might have been Chris who wrote Rince Featherington saying to Philippa Dunderhead, I thought that was a pretty good one. Yeah, I think the Featherington's have some of the best lines, don't they sometimes. Yeah, Yeah, Philippa Imprudence whenever they're on screen or even like behind the scenes are just a double act. They are hilarious.

You know. One of my favorite kind of Regency slang phrases. It might even be in the scripts, maybe get it into feature scripts, and it's just blast your eyes and it just means, you know, a way of saying I hate you, go wait or something ruder. I like a good old old draft. We were all kind of struggling to BVS. Like, I know, if I could see this, I don't think we've dropped an F word at all.

I would love to do once in a while. I don't actually think it's right for the show, but you're writing, it's just so a nice F word really communicates what you're trying to say. But also even religious oaths back then, like you couldn't say God, damn or damn you or anything like that. That was as bad as saying the F word today. So yeah, even even they were very guarded in their swear words. I think, yeah, well that you do find the F word you used quite a

lot in lots of historical contexts. Kind of depends on which which sources you go to. You not in Jane Austen so much, admittedly, but in some other places. There's definitely a Bordier Richer terminology that we could draw and if we wanted to. But I think, you know, we're not We're not impolite in British to no, we we're not really sweary or rude. So the closest moment though that that happens is when Daphne punches Nigel. When I read that script, that was almost like a f you

kind of like expression. It was like I'm here and I'm meant to behave in a particular way and then I'm just gonna deck him. And I always remember reading that bit like when I first got the script through before we started season one, and also talking about it in the rehearsal room with Phoebe, and just how much I liked it, Like, although it feels like a kind of break from convention, it also just captured something this kind of frustration and just this need to whack him.

So that, you know, that was the kind of the closest to a slang moment in some ways, wasn't it, nabel didn't you mention? There was some sort of document

like a list of customers or something like that. So the writers had this document that was done up that had a few of the rules for language in terms of the dialogue and stuff or shall verse will and things like that, not using contractions, can't they don't say, can't they they cannot or even I beg your pardon, swap for forgive me and it's not, don't it do

not and things like that. And then in the depth of this very long document there's also rules for swing and rules for using the F word and things like that, which I thought was really funny. And we've we've not gone there. I just googled it myself trying to remember some of the swear words. Strumpet. That's a fun one. And it has me thinking about how funny your job is, Annabelle, as a researcher, just googling ways for us to be,

you know, obscene. I remember when I was researcher on scandal, I often would like have to google how to build a bomb at an airport or something, and I thought like, oh, I'm surely on you know, some kind of do not fly list now, So I hope there's some equivalent of that for you. How does anyone even know how these phrases evolve? How does one even begin to research these colloquialisms and slang? Hannah, can you tell us about some

of the origins. If you're a historian and you want to go about it, you're in luck because in the early nineteenth century there are a lot of dictionaries. You have to emergence of dictionaries of slang, so compellations of colloquialisms of everyday language, as people became really interested in kind of trying to collate and collect how people spoke in an ordinary way, so you've got your kind of reference library that you can use. But then also novels

from the time. I mean, Georget Hare was a sort of famous user and creator of regency slang, so she both researched the language very carefully, but also introduced some of her own phrases. But the Regency romance novels use a lot of regency language to give it a kind of feel of the period, and Georget just keeps on coming up. And would you say she's also known for

creating a lot of the slang that we might recognize. Yeah, definitely, because that was one of her kind of traits in her writing, and it carries through to regency romance novels today.

As part of the genre is that language, but a lot of it comes, some of it from the regency, but also some of it from georget Hare herself, because she created phrases and planted them in her books because she got fed up with people copying her work, so she sort of constructed some of her own terms and phrases that had the regency sound to them, and then if they popped up in other people's work, she realized that she was being plagiarized. So there was a bit

of wordplay going on. So if you've got some time on your hands, watched the Waiting for season two, you can read georget Hair and find out which are the real regency phrases and which are the ones of her own eventution, it will take a while. So there's this wonderful presenter here in English or Susie Dent who does dictionary corner and countdown, and I you know, I'm a great fan of Susie, and now I feel a little

bit like Susi Dent. I'm having like a Susi Dent a moment when we talk about the origins of terms. So Susie, if you're listening, drop me a little message. I love you. Hannah's work corners it like that. Yeah, Hannah's hisstory corner. But we can have the extra edition, which is for the you know, the later night audience. So I know some very vulgar phrases, but I'm not going to share them on the podcast. I could put them into the chat and see if you can guess

what they are. But sometimes if you hear someone giggling quietly in the back corner of sets, it might be because I shared one of my secret very course phrases from the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, got someone trying to guess what it meant. But they are really they are really quite quite bad. So I didn't. I just I'm not going to share them. Sorry, you have to ask me in person. Oh, I'm going to come find you next time you're on set. Yeah, yeah, that's that'd

be good. We'll be right back after a work from our sponsor. Welcome back, to the season finale of bridgeton the official podcast, I'm Garby Collins and I'm sitting here with Annabelle Hood, Jess Brownell, and doctor Hannah Gregg. We've been talking about some of the Regency slang and lingo, and we pulled some other favorites. So I'm going to quiz you and see how well you remember some of these pieces of Regency language that showed up either in

our conversations or in the actual show. Do we get a prize at the end of this, so it's really no ifacking gabulous makes me do like pop quiz, don't I know? I have a thing for bob quizzes. I have a problem. What is a rake of a manhole? I'd say regency f boy, I would say a philanderer, a Philander kind of going polight there, Flander. Those are all right, all of the above, all of the above, Ding ding ding ding. What about by blow? I believe a bye blow is a child created from out of marriage.

I think it can be in an illegitimate child. So I did have a quick check on that in the Oxford English Dictionary, which is one of my main resources for the origins of language, because it always shows first use of words, and by blow is actually something like we often talk about blow by blow now as a kind of blow by blow account, you know, step by step account, and it seems to have come from a sword of fighting reference. It's like blow by blow. And then a bye blow is a side swipe to attack

someone from the side. And so this then links to the idea of illegitimacy and that they are born through a kind of side action, like a kind of slightly off off the path, so they're not a legitimate offspring. Oh wow, that's so juicy. We got a little bit of etemology, linguistics history. Moving on to dickt in the NAB. I don't know what that one is. I don't know. It's it's like mental, like that crazy in the head. Yeah, nab meant head at the time, to be dicked in.

I don't know how that means crazy, but that is what it meant. I know for sure. What to become a tenant for a life means jackled for life like shackled. I wonder if it's one that georget Haya created in her novels or whether it has a regency like a real agency root I'm going to go and find out later the cut direct, the cut direct. We have Violet bridgertin giving Lady Featherington the cut direct in season one

after the whole callin Marina business goes down. I remember we were talking about it quite a lot in the room and how vicious that is, you know, to just be fought out ignored like that. And then that night I was on the lot where we were, you know, the studio lot where we were writing, and I was waiting for my car from Ballet and this man walked in for a screening and I asked him, Oh, what's screening? And he looked at me and he ignored me, and he kept walking, and I thought, oh, I just got

the cut direct. And I was kind of thrilled. It really hurt, though I understood that's a really good one. Jesse. You also mentioned before that you have a technique for blazing through writing while also maintaining whatever energy you've got while not knowing the right words. Can you tell us about that, Yes, yes, yes. Occasionally when we're writing the script, if we're talking about a scene in the room and we understand the emotional and the character context for the scene,

but not the exact regency specifics. We might just put like Regency Regency or Annabelle TBD because we expect that you know, Annabelle or doctor Hannah will help us figure it out. I write the scene like it's a modern day scene, and I write, you know, the colloquialisms that are anachronistic, and then I just go back and I do a research pass on it or a Regency Regency pass on it. Basically it's too hard to get a perfect you know, in terms of the period the first

time through. One of the things that makes the Bridgeton scripts so distinctive, I think it is probably not what the view is will hear because it's in this stage direction too, that kind of, you know, the way the world is brought to life by the Bridgeton script's very

distinctive style of fighting stage directions. And I remember reading, you know, the season one scripts and sometimes just laughing out loud and just feeling like such warmth towards the writers because if all of the energy that was coming

through those directions. And so there was one stage direction from season one where we must be going to the Hastings House and you write, mister Darcy can f right off because the house was so much so much grands are so much bigger, and I was like, yeah, that's just absolutely right, that's like perfect. It's so beyond the world of the Darcy pride and prejudice sort of world. Mister Darcy can't f right off because this is another layer of kind of that should a glamor and wealth

and excitement. I loved all of those bits, and that's from you know, Chris Vanders and start of that in the pilot, those action lines that have a lot of modern day sayings in them. But when I think about it, it really is a Shonda Rhimes thing too, you know, all the way back to Scandal, like those action lines, and that's Shonda's voice. It's rich with references and pop culture moments and you know, comparisons. So so yeah, we

love to throw in you know, modern day slang. And actually there should be like an audiobook of it with either Chris or Betsy Bears reading out the stage directions as well, because there's just a wonderful character to it, its own character. Hasn't it really in there? And of course it is on screen when you see it, because it dictates how everyone approaches the script, which is the

blueprint for the whole production. Yeah, Betsy Beers classically reads the stage directions that most of our readthroughs for many of our shows, and she just goes for it. It's so fun to listen to her read the stage directions because you know she'll be like and then Daphne comes in and she's feeling hot. Ab I don't know it's the words or the page for me as well. I

just see you. I could just spend the lecture, theater and the library, and I always feels like a treat to see an actors speak words that I would recognize from a historical document. There's something kind of magical about it, because otherwise it just lives in my head. I'm probably

a broken record at this point. But I grew up on Austin and I streamed those mini series and films into my eyeballs, and so season one when I showed up, and then to just walk into a ballroom and see everyone dressed in regency costumes and to see everything that Will the production design and did was just like this dream come true, even though I was not a part of it. I was not on camera or anything. I

wasn't in costume. Just to see it all around me was amazing and even like today, it hasn't worn off just stepping on to set every day, so it's like a dream. And yes, seeing how just the amount of effort that goes into just a production design and like all the hard work that goes into into filming even just a minute of screen time, it's just so so many hours of work. That's what That's what blows me

away every single day. I just want to say thank you to the three of you, and especially to you Gabby.

You know, there's such a law between season one in season two, there's this big gap and to come back for this podcast and you know, try to put myself back in the writer's room in season one and think about all the decisions we made and you know, remember those like initial feelings of working on this show when it was just a spark and Chris Vanduzen and Shanda and Betsy's eye to talk about the beginning of it.

When here we are, you know, a couple of years later, and it's doing as well as it's doing and being so well received, and you know, continuing now into seasons three and four, it's incredibly exciting and was just so wonderful to revisit the inception of it all. So thank you for the opportunity, Hannah, Annabelle Jess. Thank you. It's been such a great opportunity to get to meet you, to get to know you better, to go behind the scenes of Bridgerton, and it's just been really great listeners

to just take you inside of Shanda Land. That has been great fun and we look forward to doing more of it. So just keep your ears to the feeds and we will get together again soon. So take care, be well and go back and watch Bridgeton again on Netflix. You know you want to. Thanks again for going behind the scenes with us. Until next time. Bridgeton the Official Podcast was executive produced by Lauren Homan, Sandy Bailey, Holly

Fry and me Gabby Collins. Our producer is Chris Vanduson and our producer editor is Vincent to Johnny, thanks for listening. Bridgeton the Official Podcast is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you subscribe to your favorite shows,