When Bebe, a non-native English speaker in Charlotte, North Carolina, moved from England to the United States, she learned that a minor illness isn’t called the lurgy but the crud. In the 1700s, lurgy was used jokingly to refer to “a vague medical ailment” or plain old “laziness.” By the Second World War, the lurgy took hold as military slang for an imaginary catch-all disease. The term got a boost from the long-running BBC radio comedy The Goon Show. In a 1954 episode called “Lurgi Strikes Britain,” victims of the dreaded lurgy had an uncontrollable urge to yell “Yakabool!” When it becomes clear that playing in a brass band immunizes people from the affliction, the government proceeds to drop planeloads of brass band instruments on a town. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “How “The Lurgy” Went from 18th-Century Joke to Wartime Slang to “The Goon Show””
Hello, you have A Way with Words!
Hi, this is Bebe.
I’m calling from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Hi, Bebe.
Welcome to the program.
What’s up?
Thank you.
So, I am not a first language English speaker, and I lived in England before I moved to The United States.
And when I lived in England, whenever someone was sick with something like a cold or something like that, they would say they have the lurgie.
And so when I moved to The United States, that’s what I would say.
I would say, oh god, I’ve got the lurgie.
And people would be like, oh, that’s weird.
Is that contagious?
Is that something really bad?
Right.
And so after a few years, I learned that here you say you have the crud and not the lurgie.
And so I’m wondering why there are different words and where those words even come from.
Martha, don’t you think BB is pointed out like this perfect match of how the British and American language differ?
It’s just a, like, just a perfect baby.
It’s just exactly the right example.
Yeah, and they’re both great words because they both just sort of sound like what they are.
Right?
Lurky is L U R T Y and crud or C R U D.
Right, right.
And, yeah, they’re very specific to those two different places.
Lurgie goes all the way back to at least the 1700s when, when the lurge referred to laziness or idleness or or sort of jokingly a medical condition.
You might, if you didn’t feel like working, you might say, have the lurge or the fever lurge or the fever lurden.
And by World War II, in British military slang, lurge could refer generally to an imaginary catch all disease.
And then I know Grant is going to get excited about this because something very important happened in 1954.
That goon show.
Involving a radio comedy on the BBC called The Goon Show.
And this is an extremely silly episode called Lurgey Strikes Britain.
And it featured this terrifying epidemic of the dreaded lurgey.
And this terrible disease gave its victims this uncontrollable urge to yell, to yell what, Grant?
Yakabul!
What did they yell?
They would yell, Yakabul!
Oh, Yakabul!
Yeah.
The dreaded Don’t forget, that’s what they call it in this episode.
The dreaded lurgie.
Always with the dreaded.
And this episode just gets sillier and sillier.
They figure out that the one thing that all these victims of the lurgie have in common is that none of them plays in a brass band.
It’s so amazing.
Perfect goon show episode because it is high speed, manic.
It is silly, silly, silly.
They’ve, they all practice comedy from the lowest fun to the highest illusion, like, to Greek classics.
You know what I’m saying?
Everything in between.
It is And it was so very British.
I think even at the time, a lot of the references probably just went over people’s heads because it’s so fast.
Yeah, and so silly because in this episode, the government buys 50,000,000 brass band instruments and drops them over a town that has lots of lurgey victims because, you know, the one thing they have in common is that they don’t play in a brass band.
So in short, what you’re saying is that lurgey kind of went from this, semi obscure term for, skiving off of work or being indeterminately ill to being something that everyone knew and everyone used.
It’s real fun.
At BB, you can find goon show episodes out there on the internet, and BBC actually still broadcasts them on streaming if you’re, if you have a way to get that on BBC Radio four Extra.
That’s amazing.
I’ll have to look it up.
In any case, thank you, BB, for turning us on to this really good topic of just one of the kind of basic ways that the two dialects differ.
Well, don’t get Grant started on all time radio comedy.
We’ll be here all day.
I’m not gonna be I’m not gonna give you the creeping crud by talking about OTRs, they call it.
Thank you so much.
This was great.
Yeah, sure.
Take care.
Okay.
Stay healthy.
Thank you.
I’ll try.
Bye.
Well, don’t be a sleazy, vomitized crud.
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