Chapter 1
- Wolvercote
- in Our World there is a village by this name near Oxford, which may be where DWJ got the name. Unlike the Wolvercote in the story, which is a fair-sized town, it's a small place— about 6000 people
- Coven Street
- a coven is a group of witches
- Mr Nostrum next door
- a nostrum is a fake medicine
- white heather
- traditionally believed to be lucky
- she skipped the First Grade magic exam
- the magic exams seem to be arranged like those of the Royal Schools of Music and Trinity College London in our world
Chapter 2
- Eastbourne
- an upmarket seaside town in East Sussex
- conkers
- a children's game where you take the fruit of a horse-chestnut tree, known as conkers and tie them to a string. Then each player takes turns hitting the other player's conker until it breaks
- gingerbread men
- a sort of sweet biscuit flavoured with ginger and cut into appropriately human shapes. There is a folk tale about a gingerbread man who ran away
- scrumping
- stealing apples from trees
- a den of vice
- a place used for gambling or sex work. Cat has presumably heard the phrase somewhere and isn't sure of its full meaning. A similar joke is in The Ogre Downstairs
Chapter 3
- Turkey carpet
- a kind of woven rug with geometric decoration, made in Turkey. Also called an Anatolian rug or oriental rug
- I asked her to bring tea
- tea is a light afternoon meal, which often but not necessarily includes tea to drink
- biscuits
- flat unleavened sweetened foodstuffs, not the bready things. Known as cookies in North America
- Euphemia
- the name of a Christian saint martyred in 303 CE; she is obscure in England and the name is very unusual
- Footmen kept pushing delicious food in silver plates over Cat's left shoulder
- this is called "silver service"
- pudding
- dessert
- pack of cards
- also called a deck of cards
- if we take the trumps out we can use them to play Snap with
- these are tarot cards. Gwendolyn means the cards known as "major arcana". Snap is a game where players take it in turns to play a card, and each player must call "snap" if the other player's card has the same number as the card they just played. Each of the major arcana exists only once in each pack, so they're useless for playing Snap with
Chapter 4
- an interesting lift
- usually called a dumbwaiter
- speaking tube
- just a tube which carries someone's voice to another room. These days people use microphones
- Wars of the Roses
- a civil war in England in the late 1400s
- King Canute
- another spelling of Cnut, King of England between 1016 and 1035
- why the Black Gentleman don't you…?
- just an emphatic way to say "why…?". Mr Saunders is using a euphemism to avoid saying "why the devil…?". "Black" here is as in "black magic" and has nothing to do with skin colour
- echoed round it like the dickens
- again, "dickens" is a euphemism for "devil", and is only used for emphasis
- a big red Worcester
- Worcester Pearmains are large sweet apples, coloured red or green or both
Chapter 5
- blue it all
- squander it all
- eyes like a St Bernard's
- a kind of large mournful-looking dog
- he bought Gwendolyn a pen-wiper
- a pen-wiper is a decorated piece of felt which used to be a popular souvenir. They were used to clean the nib of a dip pen so that it wouldn't get choked with dirt, and so that any excess ink didn't spill on the desk. They are now extinct
- Mr Baslam
- the name doesn't seem to be significant
- vicar
- Anglican parish priest
- the finest of all the Italian states
- Italy in our world was once composed of several squabbling independent states. In our world, they joined themselves into one country in 1861, which was called the Risorgimento. In Chrestomanci's world this didn't happen: see, for example, The Magicians of Caprona
Chapter 6
- hedge-wizards
- an impolite term for amateur magic users
- cresset
- a metal container on top of a tall pole, for burning something in. They were usually used for lighting, but since the Castle has electric light this presumably has some sort of magical use
- torts and limbecks
- a retort is a kind of glass vessel for heating a chemical and condensing the vapour this produces. The word "limbeck" is a clipped form of "alembic", a kind of retort that's obsolete in our world. I can't find any other use of "tort" to mean retort
Chapter 7
- "In the Hands of the Lamas"
- a real book, from 1936, by Martin Winchester: an adventure story set in Tibet
- For there were many in the congregation that were not sanctified
- 2 Chronicles 30:17. In the original, about ritual cleanliness during Passover; here, a dig at Gwendolyn
- the Chrestomanci pew
- between about 1800 and about 1960, many churches raised money by renting pews— benches of seats, often with a waist-high box around and a small door, where people could sit during the service. There were always free pews available if you didn't rent your own
- curate
- assistant minister
- a great stone crusader sat up on his tomb
- this is an effigy tomb, with a statue of the occupant lying on top. Crusader knights are generally shown in armour
Chapter 8
- spanking her with it hard and often
- this was not a particularly unusual punishment at the time this book was written, so it's not intended to show that Mr Saunders is a bad person. Today it would be a crime
- boxed Cat's ears
- slapped Cat hard on the side of the head. Again, not unusual at the time
- stately home
- a large house belonging to a rich or aristocratic family
Chapter 9
- Cabbala
- a medieval Christian version of Kabbalah, a mystical Jewish system of thought
- most of those are for savages
- the view of indigenous people here is possibly Cat's own, and possibly also that of Britain in the era DWJ was writing in
- naked I came into this world
- a reference to Job 1:21, where it means being naked when you're born rather than when you cross dimensions
- they're First Form standard and she's up to O Levels
- First Form is for kids of about 11, now called Year 7; O Levels are now called GCSEs and are usually taken at 16
- penny blacks
- the original postage stamps, from 1840 in our world, and worth hundreds of pounds each now
- Were they first cousins? Mine were
- marriage is legal between first cousins in the UK. It used to be fairly commonplace in upper-class society but is rare today
- pulled them long and Chinese
- people from the Far East often have a fold covering the end of their eyelid, which can seem to people from the West as though their eyes don't have a defined edge. This line is not complimentary to Chinese people
- a right Charley
- a fool
Chapter 10
- My kingdom for a skewer
- jocular reference to Shakespeare's "My kingdom for a horse" in Richard III 5:4. Janet needs a skewer to pierce the conkers so that she can thread them onto her bootlaces in order to play conkers with them
- Mine's a sevener now
- Janet's conker has beaten seven of Cat's
- those questions they ask you to find out how clever you are
- IQ tests
- Hot cross bunwrappers! Jiminy purple creepers!
- Janet says things like this when she's stressed; they're not particularly meaningful in themselves
Chapter 11
- "Sho’ ting,” said Janet. “I daren’t move widdout you, bwana."
- "bwana" is an East African term of respect. Janet is putting on a mock East African accent. I don't know why
- Three whole pints of bitter
- beer
- half a crown
- two shillings and sixpence, one-eighth of a pound. 12½p in modern money
- ten bob
- ten shillings, or 50p in modern money
- Mr Bisto
- Bisto is a brand of gravy powder. Here and for the rest of the book Janet is muddling Mr Baslam's name, on purpose as we later discover
- Creeping antimacassars!
- another nonsense Janet oath. Antimacassars are the pieces of cloth that go on the back of armchairs to protect the chair from people's hair oil
Chapter 12
- I'll bring a plague of locusts
- Cat is referring to Exodus chapter 10 in the Hebrew Bible, where Moses and his brother Aaron summon a plague of locusts to persuade Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt
- if you parted the waters of the English Channel
- Chrestomanci replies with a reference to a later portion of the same book, where Moses parts the Red Sea so that the Israelites can cross it
- Mr Biswas
- A House for Mr Biswas is a 1961 novel by V.S. Naipaul, which was in the public eye at the time Charmed Life came out
- Mr Bedlam
- "bedlam" means pandemonium, based on the name of a former London mental hospital. The same name is used for a meadow elsewhere in this book
Chapter 13
- briony
- a poisonous climbing plant, Bryonia dioica, more usually spelt "bryony"
- She looked much more homely than usual
- "homely" means ordinary-looking in British English, not unattractive
- Mr Baalamb
- "baa-lamb", baby-talk for a sheep; not "Balaam" the biblical prophet
- Mr Blastoff
- "blastoff" is an old word for the moment a space rocket leaves the ground— now usually called "lift-off"
Chapter 14
- freezing fog over the Grampians
- the Grampians are mountains in Scotland, but what was Cat going to say about them?
- all he needed was a flaming sword
- like the angel that guarded the garden of Eden in the Bible (Genesis 3:24)
- all the men have got toppers
- top hats
Chapter 15
- frock-coat
- a formal black coat worn by men. In Our World they went out of fashion in about 1910
Chapter 16
- Mr Bagwash
- a "bagwash" was a kind of laundry service where you brought them a bag full of clothes to wash
Credits
With thanks to the list: in particular, Helen Schinske and others for the existing gingerbread man story, and Devra for notes on threading conkers.
