So, I’m thoroughly enjoying the Flashman * series and I’m more than acquainted with varies forms of british slang through the dark and sordid years of reading Regency Romances and watching loads of stuff on BBC. And Harry Potter and The Magic Rock.
However, there is one word I can’t parse out.
Fag. It isn’t homosexual. It isn’t a smoke. I have been guessing " tired".
I’ve never heard it used in this way in Northern Ireland, but from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fag;
Pushkin has it. What used to happen at many schools was that junior boys acted as gofers and servants for senior boys. This was called fagging and the boys were fags.
But I’m guessing the OP means stuff like “it’s a fag” or “I’m fagged out”. Which is the “tired” meaning.
That is how I am guessing it is meant.
Though, saying that I am fagging all over town might bring on a new barrel of hilarity.
Actually, I think most of the time Flashman uses the term he is refering to his time at Rugby.
Wasn’t there a Cecil column on this? Was there any evidence that homosexual=fag came from upperclassmen requiring unnatural acts from the junior boys?
To the OP: Flashman first appears as the school bully in Tom Brown’s School Days. I don’t think you need to have read it to read the Flashman series, but it couldn’t hurt.
If you can find it, that is.
Despite it’s almost iconic status in the English language as a coming of age novel, I don’t think it’s been in print in many decades. When I did manage to find a copy in a library, it was so tattered as to be almost unusable.
Here’s what OED has:
Fagged out for tired is still common in the UK.
Thanks to Project Guttenberg, you can read it for free and print your own copy.
Actually, Oxford World’s Classics still has it in print. I’d even suggest that this is unsurprisingly so.
Though I’d agree that, in my experience as someone who very vaguely recalls reading him many years ago, it’s hardly necessary to be familiar with Hughes to enjoy any Flashman book. Beyond knowing that that’s where Harry originates as a character.
Netflix also has a couple of adaptations of this. I rented the one with Stephen Fry as the headmaster. (I’m reading Flash for Freedom! right now.)
In Surprised By Joy, C.S. Lewis describes the custom of fagging (younger students being required to do menial work for upper-classmen). He also describes the homosexual activity that went on at his school, referring to what I assume were the bottoms as tarts or house tarts.
It’s also available, since it’s out of copyright, as an e-text at Project Gutenberg.
ETA: And I see I was beaten to this by Gaffa.