Alphabot: Middle Age Jargon Buster
William the Conqueror began building the Tower of London in the 1080s, during what we now call the Middle Ages.
Imagine if you could travel back in time to meet the people that lived in that time. Do you think that they would understand if you started talking about selfies, vlogging or emojis?! Hmmm, probably not.
But people in the Middle Ages also used a lot of creative language that we now wouldn't understand! Let’s take a look at THEIR slang - can you guess what these four wacky words mean?
Baffled by bellytimber? Flummoxed by fopdoodle? Well Alphabot has the answers, and some more marvellous words from the Middle Ages...
• Bellytimber: Food
• Blob-tale: A tattle-tale or gossip
• Dringle: To waste time in a lazy manner
• Earthapple: A potato
• Fopdoodle: A fool
• Iswonk: Toil, to work
• Kidcote: Prison
• Mubblefubbles: Melancholy
• Murfles: Freckles or pimples
• Poplolly: A person whom you have a special fondness for
• Reaks: Pranks or practical jokes
• Rutterkin: A bully
Looking for even more words?
Then pop over to to look at some wonderful word clouds, inspired by vocabulary used in hundreds of thousands of 500 Words stories!
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