Reading ‘Hard Times’ and I came across this sentence that I cannot make sense of. Can someone more familiar with 19th century English explain this?
“‘What does he come here cheeking us for, then?’ cried Master Kidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament. ‘If you want to cheek us, pay your ochre at the doors and take it out.’”
I don’t know what ‘cheeking’ or ‘ochre’ refer to in this context.
From here:
To “cheek” was to speak impertinently or offensively to someone. Ochre is slang for money, in reference to its golden color.
thanks! That site is going to be useful as I’m sure to come across a lot more of these things I can’t make sense of.
“Cheek” and “cheeky” are words we still use in British English for impertinence (in speech or action). Eg “He borrowed a fiver off me and never gave it back. Bloody cheek”
“Cheeky” is somewhat known here in the US (at least for those of us who remember Saturday Night Live and “cheeky little monkey” in the early 90s), but we’re not used to it as a noun, and certainly not (at least in my experience) as a verb.
I had to edit a bit as I was surprised ti find “cheeky” is listed as British and Australian—I would have sworn it’s in the American lexicon, as I use it, but I guess SNL and some Brits I spent a lot of time around in my 20s influenced me.
I suppose it was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences.
I remember the word “cheeky” from when I was a kid in the 60’s, but then my parents were from England.
I certainly remember that sketch, but I’d never heard the word used as a verb either and didn’t want to make assumptions about what it meant. And no way I would have guessed what ‘ochre’ was a reference to.
I would not pay overmuch attention to such regional designations—it’s a reasonably well-known word.
Now the colour of golden coins, that is something a modern reader would have to pause and work out what Dickens was referring to.
Mel Gibson utters it in The Patriot, purporting to quote one British Colonel who called him a “cheeky fellow.” Its use as an adjective might thus be discerned as some slight upon the subject. But as a verb? Never heard of it.
“Cheek”, as a verb, was still being used 100 years after Dickens. Here are examples from Theodora at the Chalet School, a YA book from 1959, by English author Elinor Brent-Dyer:
“She’s boss when she wants to be and I can’t imagine anyone taking any liberties with her or cheeking her—not unless they wanted the father and mother of a row!”
“there’s going to be a major row—I can tell you that much. You don’t suddenly go out of your way to cheek a prefect.”
“she turned round and cheeked me all ends up.”
I was being careful as spending the better part of my twenties with a number of Brits has sometimes made me forget which words and phrases are cross-cultural and which are not. Like I’ll find myself using the construction “in hospital”/“at university” or the phrase “take the piss” forgetting those aren’t really US English. “Flat” for “apartment” is another one that twenty years on I still switch up.
As a fan of British sitcoms, I hear “cheek” and “cheeky” fairly regularly. A prominent example is the Honourable Teddy Meldrum on You Rang, M’Lord? – he of the constant infatuation with servant girls – who constantly uses it disparagingly against any member of the “lower classes” who doesn’t show sufficient deference. 
Since “cheek” and “ochre” have now been explained, what do we suppose is meant by “take it out”?
For 12 years, I had a boss that was Welsh. Sometimes, when I’m tired, I pronounce H as “Haytch”.
Didn’t he just mean that he should fuck off?
Surely “and work out what the dickens Dickens was referring to.”
But Dickens got paid by the word… Which our English teacher reminded us in high school, when he pointed out in Tale of Two Cities that it took 3 pages for a character to climb a flight of stairs.
Not quite - he was paid by the installment.
Dickens published his novels in serial form. That is to say, the novels appeared serially, or over a period of many weeks or months (much as a modern-day soap opera appears daily, or a modern sit-com appears weekly).
Dickens’s 20-part formula was successful for a number or reasons: each monthly number created a demand for the next since the public, often enamored of Dickens’s latest inventions, eagerly awaited the publication of a new part; the publishers, who earned profits from the sale of numbers each month, could partially recover their expenses for one issue before publishing the next; and the author himself, who received payment each time he produced 32 pages of text (and not necessarily a certain number of words), did not have to wait until the book was completed to receive payment.
Should also point out that Dickens was an early enforcer of copyright, chasing those who pirated and published editions of his books. (Particularly A Christmas Carol ) Apparently it was frustrating and expensive, since many were fly-by-night operators and it was a nonstop game of whack-a-mole. One printer he sued had the audacity to claim he should not have to stop printing because he had “improved” Christmas Carol by embellishing the story, so it was not the same.
Worth pointing out that, over here, “cheeky” has crept back into humorous/not quite pejorative use for indulging what might otherwise be called a “guilty pleasure”, as in “a cheeky Nando’s” (that’s a chain of not exactly healthy piri-piri chicken restaurants).
That usage might die the death as quickly as it emerged, of course.