British Slang
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50 free British Slang trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
British slang is a language inside a language. A visitor can speak perfect English and still be lost when a Londoner swaps a word for a rhyme, a Glaswegian describes the weather, or a colleague announces how they feel after a long shift. Much of it is centuries old, and a surprising amount was carried home by soldiers and sailors from India, Romani camps and the ports of northern Europe. This quiz covers the expressions people hear most and the stories behind them. You will be asked what everyday words and phrases mean, which rhymes hide inside Cockney slang, where nicknames for police officers, soldiers and whole cities came from, and which regional words change from one county to the next. It is written for travellers and expats decoding the office chat, fans of British television who want to follow every line, Britons testing their own vocabulary, and quiz hosts who need a ready-made round. Every answer comes with a short explanation of the meaning or origin.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The rude noise known as 'blowing a raspberry' takes its name from Cockney rhyming slang for which word?
Fart
Fart is the word rhymed with 'raspberry tart', and speakers then dropped the rhyming half. That habit of clipping is what makes the slang so baffling to outsiders.
Q 02British police are nicknamed 'bobbies' after which Home Secretary, who founded London's Metropolitan Police in 1829?
Robert Peel
Robert Peel gave the force two nicknames: officers were 'bobbies' from his first name and 'peelers' from his surname.
Q 03People from which English port city are called 'Scousers', after a sailors' stew known as lobscouse?
Liverpool
Liverpool took the nickname from a stew that sailors carried between the ports of northern Europe, where its relatives survive as Norway's lapskaus and Germany's labskaus.
Q 04A Briton who feels 'knackered', a word tied to the yards where old horses were slaughtered, is in what state?
Exhausted
Exhausted is the meaning, and the image behind it is grim: a knacker made a living from horses too old or sick to work, a trade recorded under that name since 1812.
Q 05Which coin do Britons 'spend' in a euphemism for visiting the toilet, a phrase born of coin-operated lavatory locks?
A penny
A penny was the price of entry: stage magician John Nevil Maskelyne patented a coin-operated lock for London's public toilets in about 1892, and the phrase outlived the fee.
Q 06Which nickname are British sausages said to have earned when watery wartime versions burst in the frying pan?
Bangers
Bangers are said to date from First World War meat rationing, when sausages held so much water that they could explode during cooking. The name was in print by 1919.
Q 07Which 1997 comedy about six unemployed men in Sheffield borrowed its title from British slang for 'the whole lot'?
The Full Monty
The Full Monty carried the phrase around the world, yet nobody is sure where it began. One theory credits the three-piece suits sold by the tailor Montague Burton.
Q 08British English describes anything that sharply divides opinion as being like which salty, dark-brown yeast spread?
Marmite
Marmite is made from the yeast left over by beer brewing, and its divisive taste is so familiar that Britons speak of a 'Marmite effect' whenever something splits a crowd.
Q 09'Apples and pears', listed in the first rhyming slang glossary in 1859, is Cockney for what?
Stairs
Stairs is the meaning, though speakers usually drop the rhyme itself, so a Cockney heading to bed simply goes 'up the apples'.
Q 10Which activity does British slang call 'snogging', as in the 1999 teen novel 'Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging'?
Kissing
Kissing, and with some passion, is what a snog involves. Louise Rennison's novel opened a ten-book series, and its 2008 film softened the title to 'Perfect Snogging'.
Q 11Which slang word for a pound sterling, in use since the 1600s, stays the same whether a Briton has one or fifty?
Quid
Quid is both singular and plural, so it is always 'ten quid', except in the phrase 'quids in'. Nobody knows where the word came from, though the Latin of 'quid pro quo' is one guess.
Q 12In the British word 'gobsmacked', meaning utterly astonished, which part of the body is the 'gob'?
Mouth
Mouth is the meaning of 'gob', a word probably taken from Irish or Scottish Gaelic, so a gobsmacked person looks as if they have just been hit in the face.
Q 13England's travelling fans in which sport are called the 'Barmy Army', a name coined by Australian media in the 1990s?
Cricket
Cricket fans earned the name on the 1994–95 Ashes tour, when 'barmy', British slang for slightly crazy, suited supporters who kept cheering a team that was losing badly.
Q 21Which soldiers' nickname for Britain, widespread from the First World War, grew from an Indian word meaning 'foreign'?
Blighty
Blighty also named a soldier's dream injury: a 'Blighty wound' was bad enough to send a man home from the trenches without killing or maiming him.
Q 22Which British word for 'crazy' recalls an army transit camp in India where soldiers waited for ships home?
Doolally
Doolally was the soldiers' name for Deolali, a camp opened in 1861. Men stuck there for long spells were said to catch 'Doolally tap', which translates roughly as camp fever.
Q 23Which word from South Asia, where it means 'ripe' or 'cooked', became British slang for first-class and genuine?
Pukka
Q 14Which breakfast food is British slang for a prison sentence and the title of a 1970s sitcom starring Ronnie Barker?
Porridge
Porridge was once the standard breakfast in British prisons, which is how 'doing porridge' came to mean serving time. The slang dates from the 1950s.
Q 15The London greeting 'wagwan', short for 'what's going on', comes from the creole of which Caribbean island?
Jamaica
Jamaica supplied both the greeting and its stock reply, 'nagwan', meaning that nothing is going on. Both are now heard across the Jamaican diaspora.
Q 16British slang calls a police officer 'plod' after Mr Plod, the Toyland policeman created by which children's author?
Enid Blyton
Enid Blyton put Mr Plod in her Noddy stories. The name suits a slow, heavy-footed walk, which is how the slang pictures an officer on the beat.
Q 17Which British word, coined by the political satire The Thick of It, was named Oxford's Word of the Year for 2012?
Omnishambles
Omnishambles, a situation mismanaged at every turn, was written by Tony Roche for a 2009 episode. Real politicians took it up so keenly that Oxford added it to its online dictionary in 2013.
Q 18Which British word for upper-class is tied by an unproven legend to shaded cabins on steamships sailing to India?
Posh
Posh is said to stand for 'port out, starboard home', the cooler side of the ship each way, but no evidence supports the tale. A Romani word for 'half', used of money, is likelier.
Q 19Which hooded jacket became British slang for an obsessive hobbyist, a label famously pinned on trainspotters?
Anorak
Anorak is said to have been aimed first at fans of offshore pirate radio in the early 1970s, who chartered boats to visit the radio ships. In 1984 the Observer pinned it on trainspotters.
Q 20A Londoner who asks to 'have a butcher's', rhyming slang built on a butcher's hook, wants to do what?
Take a look
Take a look is the meaning, since that is what rhymes. The S-shaped hook for hanging meat lent its name in the late 1800s, and by the 1930s plain 'butcher's' was in general use.
Pukka came home with the British from India, where a 'pukka sahib' was a true gentleman. Britons still use the word informally for anything excellent.
Q 24Which British insult, usually traced to a Romani word for a boy or child, was named word of the year in 2004?
Chav
Chav had reached the national newspapers and everyday speech by the time Susie Dent's annual language report for Oxford University Press gave it the title.
Q 25Which British word for a lout is a product of back slang, in which an everyday word is said or spelled backwards?
Yob
Yob is simply 'boy' turned around, and for decades it meant no more than that. It only began to carry an insult in the 1930s.
Q 26Which British slang word for a research scientist emerged from military talk during the Second World War?
Boffin
Boffin has no agreed origin. One theory points to Mr Boffin, the 'golden dustman' who takes up learning late in life in Charles Dickens's novel Our Mutual Friend.
Q 27In Cockney rhyming slang, what does 'tea leaf', a rhyme based purely on sound, stand for?
Thief
A thief is the meaning, chosen purely for its sound, with no link between the two ideas. Other rhymes carry a joke, as when a wife becomes the 'trouble and strife'.
Q 28In British rhyming slang, how have things turned out when they have 'gone Pete Tong', after a Radio 1 dance DJ?
Wrong
Wrong is the rhyme, and the phrase was famous enough to title a 2004 film, It's All Gone Pete Tong, about a club DJ who goes completely deaf.
Q 29A Briton who 'hasn't got a Scooby', rhyming slang built on a cartoon Great Dane, is missing what?
A clue
A clue is the missing thing, by way of 'Scooby-Doo'. The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest example comes from a Glasgow newspaper in the 1990s, a long way from Cockney London.
Q 30Before decimal currency arrived in 1971, which British coin, a twentieth of a pound, was known as a 'bob'?
Shilling
Shilling coins were called bobs by 1789, when the word surfaced in an Old Bailey trial as criminals' cant. It never took a plural, so a florin was 'two bob'.