Contribution Towards a Glossary of the Glynne Language

A dictionary of the Gladstone family's unusually rich and persistent language, recorded by Gladstone's brother-in-law, Lord Lyttelton. Glynnese can be traced through generations of family memoirs, and the families' social status led to its being taken up by outsiders. The Glossary covers the popularity of philology, to produce a spoof dictionary.

The "Glynnese Glossary" is that rare beast, a dictionary of a family language. Many families develop favourite words and phrases, giving them unique meanings based on passing events or encounters. For the most part these fade into oblivion with the death of their users. The families of William Gladstone, several times Prime Minister of England, and his wife Catherine Glynne, however, developed an unusually rich and persistent language; and this was recorded in the Glossary in 1851 by Gladstone's brother-in-law George, Lord Lyttelton, who married Catherine Glynne's sister Mary. Glynnese can be traced through generations of family memoirs, and the families' lofty social status led to its being taken up by outsiders. Lyttelton was a talented student of language, and in the Glossary he draws on the contemporary popularity of philology to produce a spoof dictionary which parodies the tradition of dialect glossaries, while accurately recording the eccentric vagaries of Glynnese.