Public-school slang continues to thrive, particularly in rural boarding schools

‘Give me a child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man,’ said St Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Jesuit order. Public schools are given children until they’re 18 — it’s no surprise they can control their world view for the rest of their life.

And their language, too. When Prince William teased his new-born son for his ‘tardiness’ in arriving some time after his due date, he was unconsciously unearthing the memory of Eton’s ‘Tardy Book’ for boys who were late to lessons — erm, I mean divs.

Twenty-five years after leaving Westminster School, I still think of its main hall as ‘Up School’, of afternoon sport there as ‘station’, even of my own clothes — rather than school uniform — as ‘shag’. Yes, really.

That’s the funny thing about school slang. Hypersensitive teenagers, terrified of saying something silly, let alone something sexual, are set free by the conventions of slang to speak a nonsense language without fear of embarrassment.