# Archibald - Burgess's Clockwork Orange



## terikeee

Hi there 

In *Burgess's Clockwork Orange*, one of the prisoners is talking about archibalds:

_"And at that time you couldn't get hold of a poggy" (whatever that was, brothers), "not if you was to hand over ten million *archibalds*, so what do I do, eh, I goes down to Turkey's and says I've got this sproog on that morrow, see, and what can he do?"_

The translation to Czech (my native language) is about ack-ack guns, which I'm not sure is the correct translation (and the dictionaries aren't helping). I think that the Czech translator tried to keep the original's "gibberish" of the crazy prisoner, however, I'd like to know, if there is something "real" behind the archibalds. 

Also - _sproog_? Any thoughts?

Thanks a lot!


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## wandle

First thoughts: 'poggy' might be slang for 'pom-pom', which was the nickname of the rapid-fire Bofors AA gun; an 'archibald' is presumably a unit of money; given the number, ten million, I suppose it is a pound; 'sproog' from the context appears to mean 'job' in the sense of 'criminal act'.


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## Retired-teacher

It could be that "Archibald" is a portrait on the banknotes. If so "ten million Archibalds" would mean ten million notes of that denomination.


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## wandle

English banknotes are or were signed by the Governor of the Bank of England ('I promise to pay ...').
Cameron Cobbold was in that post from 1949 to 1961, and his signature would be on most or all notes current at the time of the book.
It may be that the signature was unclear and a pound note was referred to as an Archibald.

I do not know whether Burgess was using genuine underworld slang, or making up his own.


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## london calling

I thought 'poggy' was old army slang for spirits (e.g . rum). I agree that an archibald is some form of currency.


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## PaulQ

The vocabulary of "A Clockwork Orange" is based on Russian1 and many of the words (not all) are defined in a .pdf file http://www.single-serving.com/constructed/Nadsat/nadsat_dict.pdf. in which archibald is "currency" i.e., as Retired teacher says:


Retired-teacher said:


> It could be that "Archibald" is a portrait on the banknotes. If so "ten million Archibalds" would mean ten million notes of that denomination.


Wandle's point does not seem to be valid as the story is set in a fictitious time.

1 See Appendix:A Clockwork Orange - Wiktionary


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## terikeee

wandle said:


> English banknotes are or were signed by the Governor of the Bank of England ('I promise to pay ...').
> Cameron Cobbold was in that post from 1949 to 1961, and his signature would be on most or all notes current at the time of the book.
> It may be that the signature was unclear and was referred to as an Archibald.
> 
> I do not know whether Burgess was using genuine underworld slang, or making up his own.



It continues with: _It was all this very old-time real criminal's slang he spoke._ - so I think it may be a genuine slang!


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## Andygc

An Archibald was a type of anti-aircraft gun in the First World War. That meaning doesn't fit the context. I agree that it seems to mean currency.


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## dojibear

The movie takes place in the future, so many of the words in it are intentionally made-up "slang that doesn't exist today". They are not gibberish -- they are normal (in that future time) words, that we don't have today.

Welcome to the forum, terikee.


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## wandle

PaulQ said:


> Wandle's point


Suggestion.

Here is a bit of context:


> There was Zophar on his bunk, a very thin and brown veck who went on and on and on in his like cancery goloss, so that nobody bothered to slooshy. What he was saying now like to nobody was "And at that time you couldn't get hold of a poggy" (whatever that was, brothers), "not if you was to hand over ten million archibalds, so what do I do, eh, I goes down to Turkey's and says I've got this sproog on that morrow, see, and what can he do?" It was all this very old-time real criminal's slang he spoke.



So the words spoken by Zophar are evidently not in Burgess's invented argot, since the narrator does not know what a poggy is, but says it is real old-time (therefore to Burgess present-time) criminal slang.


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## terikeee

PaulQ said:


> The vocabulary of "A Clockwork Orange" is based on Russian1 and many of the words (not all) are defined in a .pdf file http://www.single-serving.com/constructed/Nadsat/nadsat_dict.pdf. in which archibald is "currency" i.e., as Retired teacher says:
> Wandle's point does not seem to be valid as the story is set in a fictitious time.
> 
> 1 See Appendix:A Clockwork Orange - Wiktionary



Thanks for the Nadsat dictionary. I've had only the one that was attached to the earlier versions of the book, this one seems to have the words I'm sometimes missing...


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## terikeee

dojibear said:


> The movie takes place in the future, so many of the words in it are intentionally made-up "slang that doesn't exist today". They are not gibberish -- they are normal (in that future time) words, that we don't have today.
> 
> Welcome to the forum, terikee.



Thanks for the welcoming! 
Yes, I know that they aren't all gibberish, I understand most of them - the Russian-based ones because I study Russian and the English ones because I like playing with words and searching the meanings of them...  but some of them are a bit difficult for me as I'm not a native speaker. That's why I joined the forum! I've already found answers to a few of my questions about Clockwork Orange there. 

EDIT: By the gibberish I meant the words of Zophar who seems to be a little bit crazy, just talking to himself ... not all the slang etc.


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## wandle

wandle said:


> English banknotes are or were signed by the Governor of the Bank of England


My mistake. They are signed by the Chief Cashier. 
There has been no Chief Cashier with a name anything like Archibald (even if badly written), so the idea that the signature could have given rise to the term Archibald is a non-starter.


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## PaulQ

As the story takes place in a fictitious time - who is to say who the Governor of the Bank of England was?


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## Trochfa

Andygc said:


> An Archibald was a type of anti-aircraft gun in the First World War. That meaning doesn't fit the context. I agree that it seems to mean currency.



I'm not so sure. I think the OP is saying that "at that time" you couldn't get hold of a more modern, rapid-fire WWII anti-aircraft gun [the poggy or pom-pom Wandle mentioned], not even if you were to try and exchange it for a million of the old "Archibalds" from WWI, which presumably would have been much less effective, more abundantly available, and so therefore much less valuable. [i.e. He's talking about bartering rather than purchasing.]

He needs a "poggy" [or similar] for the criminal job he has on tomorrow, and so he goes down to Turkey's to see if he can help.


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## wandle

PaulQ said:


> As the story takes place in a fictitious time - who is to say who the Governor of the Bank of England was?


The narrator says that Zophar was speaking real old-time criminal slang.
In other words it seems Burgess was inserting into the fictitious future narrative a sample of real underworld slang from his own day.

He makes his narrator call it 'old-time', because that is what it would be from the fictitious future perspective and he makes him call it 'real', to tell us that it is genuine contemporary slang from Burgess' day (or earlier).

Of course, even when we see this is what Burgess means, we cannot be sure (at least I cannot) whether the 'real' slang is not also made up.

Nevertheless, it is reasonable to look for criminal slang of Burgess' day or earlier to see if we can find the terms he uses.
The only thing wrong with the signature theory is that it started from a false assumption (the Governor). If the initial data had been correct, it might have been a useful shot.


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## PaulQ

There are seven objections to an Archibald being a reference to German, First World War, Ack-Ack guns: all of them are fatal.

If I remember, there is only one indirect hint in the novel that there has been a war, and that is in passing. 

Alex's (the hero's) language is chiefly centred around Russian with a few German and English terms thrown in.
There were never 10 million Ack-Ack guns. 

At the fictitious time that the book is set, (England, perhaps somewhere in the early 60s) an "Archibald", as a reference to a German, First World War, Ack-Ack gun would, as the OED suggests have been long forgotten.OED 





> Archibald: Mil. slang (only during or with reference to the First World War (1914–18)). Now disused.
> 
> 1. As a count noun: an anti-aircraft gun; (also) a shell from such a gun. See also Archie n. 2.Chiefly applied by Allied soldiers to German guns.


The last known record of the use was in 1919, and the entry was updated in 2014.


Who would you hand 10 million Ack-Ack guns over to?
Burgess' army career did not involve any sort of gun.

The theme and characterisation of the book does not lend itself to the sudden appearance of German, First World War, Ack-Ack guns - even as slang/argot.


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## PaulQ

wandle said:


> it seems Burgess was inserting into the fictitious future narrative a sample of real underworld slang from his own day.


I am not sure how to answer that, other than to say that Burgess was an accomplished linguist* who also invented languages. Not only did he invent the argot of The Clockwork Orange" but also a "Caveman language" for another film.

There was absolutely no need for him to draw upon any "real underworld slang from his own day." which given his background, he was unlikely to have had much experience of and no need to experience it.

This whole mess of the rare word "Archibald" being a gun and someone handing over 10 million of them is quite ridiculous.


wandle said:


> we cannot be sure (at least I cannot) whether the 'real' slang is not also made up.


It is. You can be sure now. It is what Burgess did and liked doing.


wandle said:


> The only thing wrong with the signature theory is that it started from a false assumption (the Governor).


How do you know it is a false assumption? Have you some insight into this fictitious world that denies the possibility of a note being named after someone?

The US has several (perhaps all) of its banknotes possessing the names of past presidents. Discussing why a unit of currency in a work of fiction is called what it is, is akin to discussing Teletubbie anatomy and about as productive but your theory still seems reasonable (unless the notes had a picture of Mr Archibald on them.)


*Anthony Burgess - Wikipedia


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## wandle

PaulQ said:


> How do you know it is a false assumption?


I explained that in post 13. The signature is that of the Chief Cashier, not the Governor.


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## PaulQ

Then Archibald was the chief cashier who was later promoted - you are still right.


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## wandle

There was no Archibald in either role, nor was there any name which could have been mistaken for Archibald, which is why I dropped the signature theory.
I still say Burgess is using 'Archibald' to mean a unit of currency, and that it is worth looking for 'poggy' and 'Archibald' as real slang terms.

If we cannot find them, that does not prove they were made up, so the uncertainty remains until some definite information one way or the other comes to light.


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## PaulQ

wandle said:


> There was no Archibald in either role,


In the story there was ... it is just that Burgess didn't bother to mention it. It's not real - it is a work of fiction.


wandle said:


> and that it is worth looking for 'poggy' and 'Archibald' as real slang terms.


Well, good luck with that - Burgess made them up. You could start with a Russian dictionary.  "Poggy" _[похи]_, in Russian, = "kidnapping".


wandle said:


> If we cannot find them, that does not prove they were made up,


It also does not mean that my invisible pet unicorn did not secretly travel through time and inspire Burgess with a rendering of Beowulf... but it is as unlikely.

Have you considered that as US banknotes have the stirring names of the past presidents, as a small amount of humour Burgess chose a slightly humorous name, indicative of a very plain man, as the slang name he would use for a bank note?


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## Scott AM

I'm with PaulQ on this one. These 3 words are likely Burgess' creations (or at least this context is), and a search for their meaning "in real life" will likely be fruitless. Especially when you consider the amount of translation that has already done in the past 55-odd years since the book's release.

With these words, I think there are a couple of possibilities:

- Burgess made these words up entirely, to represent pre-Nadsat criminal slang. But this slang could still originate from a time in the future of the book's writing, in the early 1960s. Or maybe the early 1960s of the book is different from our timeline, as well? 

- Alex doesn't care about old-time criminal argot. When he relates the story, he just makes up some words to represent what, to him, was nonsense.


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## wandle

wandle said:


> There was no Archibald in either role





PaulQ said:


> In the story there was


There has been no Archibald in either role, either Chief Cashier or Governor, in the history of the Bank of England.
Therefore neither of these worthies could have been the origin of 'Archibald' as a slang term for a pound note.
That is why I dropped that suggestion, as I said in post 13. I still think an Archibald is meant to be a unit of currency.

The fact that Burgess makes Alex say this:





wandle said:


> It was all this very old-time real criminal's slang he spoke.


shows one of two things: either Zophar's words are real criminal slang from Burgess' time (or earlier), or Alex's comment itself is a fiction within a fiction.

It would take some work to research criminal slang from the sixties _and earlier_, so obviously it is much easier to say, 'Oh, it is just Burgess' invention'.
I think it is safer, when one is asked for advice, to reserve judgement and say, as I did in post 4:


wandle said:


> I do not know whether Burgess was using genuine underworld slang, or making up his own.


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## Trochfa

PaulQ said:


> and someone handing over 10 million of them is quite ridiculous.



I take your point on the other critcisms regarding the use of "Archibald" to mean a WWI gun, however, I did not mean that there were actually 10 million "Archibald" guns to hand over. I meant that it was being used figuratively, such as in the similar phrases "I wouldn't let you have something  for all the tea in China" [when they don't possess all the tea in China] or "I wouldn't let you have my brand new porche for a million of that other type" [when there were never a million of the other car actually made, and they don't possess them anyway.]


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## PaulQ

wandle said:


> shows one of two things: either Zophar's words are real criminal slang from Burgess' time (or earlier), or Alex's comment itself is a fiction within a fiction.


This is what is known as a "false dichotomy".

Alex's comment is simply a part of the fiction of the story.

In fiction, an author often creates items of knowledge known only to his characters - indeed the author has to do this. Alex, the hero, makes a remark about Zophar's phrasing, that is true for Alex. The reader is invited to "suspend belief" and is asked to accept that what is said is part of Alex's knowledge.


wandle said:


> It would take some work to research criminal slang from the sixties _and earlier_, so obviously it is much easier to say, 'Oh, it is just Burgess' invention'.
> I think it is safer, when one is asked for advice, to reserve judgement and say, as I did in post 4:


This is again an error - Firstly, it is not "easier to say" - it requires some supporting evidence, whereas your theory does not and, in fact, relies on a lack of evidence. Secondly, in absolute terms your reasoning ends in "we can never know anything" and whereas in metaphysics this is perfectly reasonable, in the real world, it is pretty much pointless.

Such matters as Zophar's dialect/argot are answered on the balance of probabilities derived from known facts about the story and characters, the characteristics of fiction writing in general, the author, the author's history and the consequences of the risk of being wrong. Your assumption that Burgess, having quite brilliantly invented an argot, suddenly becomes incapable of inventing another and now, to allow the story to continue, uses a word (of which there is no known record) taken from the alleged vocabulary of some mysterious criminal group is frankly, to me, so improbably as to make it unbelievable.  "What is stated without evidence may be dismissed without evidence." (Christopher Hitchins)

May I ask if you have read the book?


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## wandle

PaulQ said:


> your theory does not


What theory would that be?

The only proposition I have committed myself to is that I think an Archibald is meant to be a unit of currency.


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## siares

PaulQ said:


> a slightly humorous name, indicative of a very plain man


Is the name endemic in lower classes? To me as a non-native it sounds quite grand, Archduke Archibald..

I wonder how the Czech translator came up with ack-ack guns?? With desperate research involved?


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## PaulQ

siares said:


> Is the name endemic in lower classes?


|No, but is a name that has become unfashionable (and was even when the story was written.) 


siares said:


> I wonder how the Czech translator came up with ack-ack guns?? With desperate research involved?


He did not use his brain; instead he used the OED blindly - See my #17.


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## PaulQ

wandle said:


> What theory would that be?





wandle said:


> The narrator says that Zophar was speaking real old-time criminal slang.
> In other words it seems Burgess was inserting into the fictitious future narrative a sample of real underworld slang from his own day.


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## wandle

(1)_ The narrator says that Zophar was speaking real old-time criminal slang._
(2)_ In other words *it seems* Burgess was inserting into the fictitious future narrative a sample of real underworld slang from his own day._

Statement (1) is a fact. Statement (2) simply gives the *apparent* meaning of statement (1).

As I pointed out in post 4, *prior* to the above statements, and repeated since, I do not know whether Burgess was inventing Zophar's words or not. 
Statements (1) and (2) are both non-committal on that question.

So no 'theory' there (unless the practice of weighing one's words and reserving judgement is a theory).


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## terikeee

PaulQ said:


> |No, but is a name that has become unfashionable (and was even when the story was written.)
> He did not use his brain; instead he used the OED blindly - See my #17.



Yes, that's exactly what I think and why I asked the question - PaulQ, thanks a lot for the OED entry! 
The whole translation is very weird, with a lot of incorrect translations and out of keeping with the original's musicality and awareness.

So thank you all for your replies! I may need a little more help later with some other words... as for a non-native speaker some phrases or words are very difficult, even though I consider myself a very good reader.


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## PaulQ

terikeee said:


> as for a non-native speaker some phrases or words are very difficult,


Not just native speakers, the book is perhaps unique - Anthony Burgess slowly introduces words in "Nadsat" to the reader. At first he explains them but later the reader has to pick up the meaning from the context - the interesting result is, at the end of the book, you feel that you can speak in Nadsat.


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## terikeee

PaulQ said:


> Not just native speakers, the book is perhaps unique - Anthony Burgess slowly introduces words in "Nadsat" to the reader. At first he explains them but later the reader has to pick up the meaning from the context - the interesting result is, at the end of the book, you feel that you can speak in Nadsat.



Hehe,  I'm somewhere in the middle of the book and I already feel the urge to use some of the words...  but that's maybe because I also speak Russian and I like to combine the two languages!


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## siares

Thank you, PaulQ.

I only now just realised that ack ack is a real world. But I don´t know whether military fans in Czech republic know it.
ack-ack  (ak*′*ak′), n. [Informal.](esp. during World War II).

Militaryantiaircraft fire.
Militaryantiaircraft arms.


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## wandle

siares said:


> ack ack is a real word


Yes. It comes from the 'phonetic alphabet' used in Britain for radio messages during the second world war. The process is:

(1) 'anti-aircraft' is abbreviated to AA;
(2) AA is rendered as 'ack ack'.

Similarly, AM, for morning, is rendered as 'ack emma' and PM as 'pip emma'.
I do not know any other such terms offhand.


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## siares

Very interesting, thank you.


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## Scott AM

I notice it hasn't been mentioned, but the use of "Archibald" (or "Archie") for anti-aircraft fire is generally attributed to being a humorous reference to the old music-hall song "Archibald, Certainly Not!"

The slang words that defined the First World War
Archibald! Certainly Not

Isn't it redundant to say "old music-hall song"? It's not like there are any new music-hall songs, are there?


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## wandle

As a matter of fact, the signals alphabet in question dates from WW1. See Wikipedia.


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## Szkot

Burgess even made deliberate errors in his own nadsat glossary (e.g. nazz=fool) so an invented old-time criminal slang would be easy.


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## Keith Bradford

There is a lot of nonsense being talked here.  Archibald is meant to be a unit of currency, based on the signature of Gerald Archibald, chief cashier of the Bank of England 2023-2027.  I thought everybody knew that.


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## PaulQ

At last - some sanity!


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## wandle

Keith Bradford said:


> Archibald is meant to be a unit of currency, based on the signature of Gerald Archibald, chief cashier of the Bank of England 2023-2027. thought everybody knew that.


Whose invention is that, then?! Anthony Burgess' or *Keith Bradford's*?


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## london calling

wandle said:


> There was no Archibald in either role, nor was there any name which could have been mistaken for Archibald, which is why I dropped the signature theory.
> I still say Burgess is using 'Archibald' to mean a unit of currency, and that it is worth looking for 'poggy' and 'Archibald' as real slang terms.


As I said above, 'poggy' is army slang for spirits. See Google Books here. The same link defines 'archibalds' as aeroplanes or anti-aircfraft guns, however, whereas here I think it is clear we are talking about money.


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## Scott AM

london calling said:


> As I said above, 'poggy' is army slang for spirits. See Google Books here. The same link defines 'archibalds' as aeroplanes or anti-aircfraft guns, however, whereas here I think it is clear we are talking about money.



I saw that definition too. I'd prefer to find a source other than this one though. Especially seeing as how the definition of "Archibalds" is likely out of context. Note that a Google search for poggy and rum didn't give any additional sources for this slang - not to say it's the last word by any means. Does someone have a copy of "Partridge's Dictionary of Slang" to check on this?


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## london calling

I looked for the dictionary definition of 'poggy' because I remembered my army officer grandfather using 'poggy' to mean liquor.


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