Un Lun Dun - China Mieville [155]
Do a bunk: Run away.
Estate: Several big apartment blocks—a housing project.
Git: Unpleasant person.
Knackered: Exhausted.
Lairy: Cheeky and aggressive.
Manky: Disgusting.
Minging: Dirty/smelly/unpleasant.
Mobile: Short for “mobile phone”—a cell phone.
Nutter: Somebody acting crazy.
Quite: When Americans say something is “quite good/bad/etc.,” you mean it is “very” good/bad/etc. When Brits say it, we sometimes mean it in just the same way—but then sometimes we mean something is only “fairly,” or “moderately,” or “kind-of-but-not-extremely” good/bad/etc. It can be confusing.
Rubbish: Trash / garbage.
Rum: Strange.
Sarky: Sarcastic.
Scrum: A confused situation involving lots of people.
Shtum: Silent.
Soft (“Don’t be soft”): Foolish.
Take the Michael: Mock, make fun of.
Tarmac: What they make airport runways out of, but we use it to describe normal roads, too.
Tower block: Big apartment block.
Yonks: A long time.
ALSO BY CHINA MIÉVILLE
King Rat
Perdido Street Station
The Scar
Iron Council
Looking for Jake: Stories
Un Lun Dun is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2007 by China Miéville
Illustrations copyright © 2007 by China Miéville
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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eISBN: 978-0-345-49723-9
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