How Bona to Vada your Dolly Old Eek!

REBECCA WILCOCK takes a linguistic deep dive into Polari, the campest language of the 20th century!

Paul Baker's 'Fabulosa!'

‘Queen’, ‘camp’, ‘butch’, ‘femme’, ‘drag’, ‘dish’, and even ‘naff’.

Sound familiar? You might have heard these words at Pride, on Rupaul’s Drag Race, or scrolling through the LGBTQ+ sides of TikTok. 

Most of these words have been around for just over a century, (when being homosexual was severely frowned upon). It was mainly spoken between 1930 and 1970: whispered in dance halls, exchanged behind stage doors, murmured on public transport, and breathed into hidden spaces.

I’ll dive into the playful grammar, linguistic quirks, and eclectic vocab (how ‘fabulosa’!), that elevated Polari to be a tool of expression during times of hardship. The language’s compound expressions, innovative word play, and subversion of pronouns, helped carve a unique cultural identity.

Camaraderie in Gossiping

Polari was an extremely social language believe it or not, (well social amongst its speakers), mainly spoken in populous urban areas, where gossip was a form of social currency. It was packed with cheeky slang made for gossip; words such as ‘dish’ (a handsome man), ‘cackle’ (gossip), or ‘vada the eek’ (check out their face). Gossip was used to bond, throw shade, spill the tea, and stay under the radar.

Endearments like ‘dear’, ‘ducky’ and ‘girl’ are words still used today in the queer community, often punctuating the end of sentences, serving as subtle markers of identity. The Polari speaker that calls everyone ‘dear’, according to Baker (2020) does not mean it insincerely, rather she’s signalling a shared understanding, a camaraderie built on trust and mutual recognition.  This is a nuanced way of balancing openness and secrecy, which allows speakers to navigate complex social landscapes that are systemically pitted against them.

Subverting the ‘She’

You may have noticed that I’ve been referring to speakers as ‘she’- and no, it’s not a typo. This playful flip is part of what’s known as ‘she-ing,’ where he becomes, she, and sometimes she became he. Traditionally, it was a way to reclaim gendered language, bending the rules and blurring the lines, long before the politics of pronouns that would later hit the mainstream. The term ‘she-ing’ was later coined by Jez Dolan of the Manchester Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, capturing how speakers utilised language not just for laughs, but as a form of resistance (The Feints and Jabs of Polari, Britain’s Gay Slang, 2019).

Blink, and you’ll miss it!

Julian and Sandy - a camp duo from the 1960’s BBC radio show Round the Horne - smuggled Polari into the prim homes of the British public, every Sunday afternoon. Played by Carry On films’ iconic Kenneth Williams (“Ooh Matron!”) and Hugh Paddick, they would close each episode with a heavy dose of flamboyance – never openly gay, but clearly so to those in the know. Their Polari was basic, carefully altered for radio, enough to hint to those who were really listening. Other speakers would understand the signals, whilst everyone else would laugh, never fully understanding the real meaning underneath all the mischief.

Lines like, “Is a pound, Gordon, go and tinker with your motorbike,” sounded harmless, unless you knew that Gordon was ‘rough trade’ (think: masculine presenting man, quite dominant or a bit blokey).

And ‘tinkering’ you can guess – was much more than fiddling with mechanics, unbeknownst to the prude British public of the 1960s. In a time of legal and cultural oppression, Julian and Sandy offered visibility through humour. It was by no means a loud protest. It was a quiet defiance, using code, camp, and comedy to say; we’re here, and we’re not sorry. 

Linguistic Legacy

As the 1960s rolled on, the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 was introduced, which led to the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in private between consenting adults over 21 and a slump in the use of Polari. However, while the act was a significant step forward, it did not erase the social stigma attached to homosexuality. Even though Polari began to decline, its cultural impact remains and there is evidence of a revival in the 21st century. It stands as testament to the creativity, resilience, and the wit of a community that fought for recognition and visibility in a time of repression.

Let’s Learn the Lingo! (It’s very camp of course!)

With a little help from the book Fabulosa! (a lot of help actually - I’m not yet fluent - far from it actually) by the Polari expert Paul Baker (I’m a big fan) – a must read from anyone curious about this wonderful language – here’s your crash course in classic Polari vocab, plus some juicy details on how it all works linguistically:

• Naff = A word you’ve probably heard! Used in lots of different contexts, for example it can be anything dull, bad or disappointing. In Polari, it can serve as a noun or an adjective, “she’s naff, darling” (not worth the effort). “Naff off”- the lukewarm version of “F off.” Naff also stands for ‘Not Available For…’ it’s best if I don’t finish that sentence (I’m sure you get the picture).

• Bold = Someone who is out of the closet and unapologetically themselves.

• Bona = (Bon comes from the Latin for good) and means nice, good, or genuine in Polari. 

Verbs and Grammar - (Polari verbs sometimes worked like English Verbs).

• Vada = It means to either look or see. It comes from the Italian ‘vedere,’ which stems from the latin ‘vidēre.’

• Vadering = Looking

• Bona vadering = Good looking

Compounding- Polari often combined words to create new meanings:

• Omi-Palone = Man-Woman (gay man)

• Palone-Omi = Woman-Man (lesbian woman) 

Synecdoche- a fancy term for naming something by one of its features to create new meanings: 

• Smellies = Perfume

• Glossies = Magazines

• Timepiece = Watch

Polari uses open-class words like nouns, adjectives, and verbs which are easy to invent. Closed-class words like ‘the’, ‘and’, ‘but’ are much harder to create. Therefore, Polari often skips them, so that sentences become short, punchy, and harder to decode - overall, being a brilliant tool for survival and sass.

Today, many of Polari’s iconic words and expressions continue to thrive, embedded in the language of LGBTQ+ culture, and a legacy of a linguistic rebellion that was as much about survival as it was celebration.

Now, How Bona to Vada Your Dolly Old Eek! 

Did you manage to translate some of it?

How nice to see your pretty old face!

Written by REBECCA WILCOCK, (BA Creative Writing and English Literature student, University of Chester, UK)