The Bubble’s Guide To RHS Slang – Savannah Collis
Have you found yourself puzzling over some of the more obscure pieces of RHS jargon? Perhaps you’re new to the school and haven’t yet got to grips with the slang and practices of the RHS culture, or maybe you’ve been here a while and still stumble across some old tradition or slang used by teachers and pupils in the school. If so, here is our guide to successfully navigating the unique culture of RHS.
The Royal Hospital School has established a cultural “bubble”-a term that predates our fine publication-which seems to separate it from the wider world. Over many years, small traditions and practices have been both developed and lost in the RHS community. For example, in a conversation I once had with the former RHS staff, Mr Godfrey, affectionately known as “The Colonel”, I came to discover sounds were once used instead of slang. For instance, a brief whistle starting as a low pitch going to high meant someone was very tall. This custom is no longer in action; however, other traditions have been adopted, for example the year 13 swapping of uniform for “Nelson pranks”. The students in Nelson take part in a series of pranks, ensuring that they go out in style at the end of the year. This usually occurs in the penultimate to last week of school. The Nelson students founded the tradition a number of years ago where, for the last divisions rehearsal, the boys wear the girls’ uniform and vice versa.
Another example of RHS tradition is the House Shout/House Drama competitions. These are, if you are unware, competitions between the houses that occur at some point in February where the houses ‘perform’ songs or put on plays. The House competitions always conjure up healthy house rivalry, bitterness in losing and essentially bring the house communities together. The House shout competition has been running since 1985 (34 years).
Slang is a fundamental part of RHS and is something quite unique to the school. There are a multitude of phrases in the RHS dictionary that, if you said them to any ‘non-RHSian’, you would most likely receive a blank or confused expression. If you said ‘gidge’ to someone in the Navy, they wouldn’t know what you meant. I was recently asked by a new member of staff what is entailed in a divvies rehearsal and I mentioned “squads”, “forming up” and “divvies” so casually, automatically expecting them to know what I meant. I had to explain what a squad is in terms of divvies and when we normally have divisions.
Here is a list of some of the current RHS slang/phrases/terms:
Mess- Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner.
Stand Easy- Break time.
Divvies kit/Number ones- Divisions uniform.
Departmental- A department detention.
DT- Detention.
Civvies- Normal or ‘civilian’ clothes.
Gidge- Hat worn on divisions.
Mess Date- when two people have lunch together in a ‘date’ fashion.
Congo/Congers- Congregational practice, hymn practice in the chapel every Saturday morning before period 1.
LOBS- ‘Look Out Boy Sailor’, a call issued by a student to warn of an approaching teacher.
‘Quis? Ego!’- Latin for ‘Who?…Me!’. The first term is said by someone wishing to give something away, the second by the person who wishes to receive that item.
Stash- A cool or interesting piece of kit or clothing- Eg a Suffolk schools athletics hoodie.
Doorknobs- We will let you find this one out for yourself!
The Bubble- The school’s platform for articles submitted by students and teachers about upcoming events, political issues, todays current affairs etc, a play on the established idea of RHS as a separate, self-contained community.
These are just a few of the words and phrases that make up the RHS jargon.
Essentially, RHS slang and tradition is a rather large part of RHS life. Customs and jargon have come and gone over the years and will continue to do so. I hope that this has been an informative article and you feel more in the know next time you hear RHS slang. You never know you could be the initiator of the next RHS tradition!
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