Lashes, langers, bozzers and belly bachelors: a new book decodes Cork’s local slang

Sex, drink and religion are common motifs in the ‘extraordinarily rich’ colloquial vernacular of Ireland’s second city If Des MacHale had to nominate a favourite from the lexicon of insulting and inexplicable terms that comprise Cork slang, it would have to be “langer”. Depending on tone and context it can mean idiot, drunkenness or penis, a versatility that baffles outsiders and further enhances the word’s value. “Langer is an absolutely beautiful word. I’m very fond of it,” says MacHale. Hence its inclusion in the title of his new book, Langers & Lashes: A Compendium of Cork Slang, which bills itself as the most comprehensive collection of the crude, playful, savage and ingenious wordplay that inflects speech in Ireland’s second city. “It’s an extraordinarily rich area that most dictionaries avoid,” MacHale says. “It’s a very real phenomenon of language that hasn’t been taken terribly seriously until now.” In a foreword, the publisher, Mercier, said it had added explanatory notes to highlight some terms’ “historical context and outdated social views” and that inclusion did not imply endorsement. “By retaining these terms as artefacts of t