Polari Words from Lingua Franca

In the table of numerals below the Polari Glossary is cited as PG and Hancock's numerals as IH. Numerals are not listed in P. It may be noted that for the numerals 7, 8, 9 an alternative occurs by placing together 6-1, 6-2, 6-3. It is unclear why this system is used. Ms. Brummett has offered the following conjecture to me in a private communication, and her conjecture appears to me to have some merit:

… you state, "It may be noted that for the numerals 7, 8, 9 an alternative occurs by placing together 6-1, 6-2, 6-3. It is unclear why this system is used." Here is a possible explanation: the relatively small Polari vocabulary did not always go intact to all areas – i.e., San Francisco might have words not known in New York, and vice versa. The six-based system is probably British, when the sixpenny piece was a common coin, and of relatively high value. Lacking a very pressing need for numerals higher than six, some areas did not have them, and thus when needed, this system could have been used.

Occitan (Oc) plays an important part in the form of Lingua Franca embedded in Polari. For further information, see my brief discussion of Occitan.

It should be noted that while there seems to be no doubt that words came into Polari from Lingua Franca, they are in a much more corrupted form than those found in Shay Lamora’. In many cases it is not clear if Lingua Franca is actually the source, and so I must confess that my choice must be considered subjective. But etymology has never been an exact science.

An American Polari

My older friends (I hung around with them because they were wittier and more intelligent than most of the women) had traveled extensively, at least when young, to New York, San Francisco, at least. They went to New Orleans frequently. Some of them had been in the Navy, Merchant Marine, or Coast Guard. The older ones had served in WWI or WWII, and had been to the UK or Europe.
The vocabulary I remember was not as extensive as I've seen reported, and was mostly sexual. I can recall (using the wordlist) hearing: Aunt Nell, barkey, bene, bevvy, bod, bold, bona, camp, chicken, cottage, deek (never vada), drag, facha (never heard "eek" or "ecaf", by the way), gam, grope, multy, nada, nix (never nanti), palaver, pogy, ponce, punk, rent, trade. The usual term for a potential trick, or just a guy, etc., was "number", usually pronounced "numba". I've never seen that listed.
You can see that the Lingua Franca-derived terms, particularly the ones not very sexual, give the impression of being Italian...
"Facha" was always used, as I pointed out. I recall other instances of what I assumed was Italian picked up from the Sicilian immigrants to the area, both to the Memphis metropolitan area and the rural counties of northern Mississippi. I think there might be a great deal of difficulty in actually distinguishing these possible origins…
[I] worked lights for Lillie Cass' drag show, this higher education gained from that and listening to guys talk at bars, after Poetry Society meetings, backstage at bars & community theatres, my grandmother's male antique-dealer colleagues, carnies [=circus-workers] privately and at second-hand bookstores and coffeehouses...

She finds herself unable to gloss "camp" succinctly, but most readers probably get the idea.