Bless those lovable Brits! They’re always coming up with fandangled new slang like ‘lorry’ and ‘fruit machine’ and naming their kids ‘Neville’ and ‘Archibald’, truly they’re masters of language in all forms. But have you ever wished you could speak like they do? Well break open a vat of custard, take a hammer to your teeth and get ready to learn the UK festival language thanks to Global Gathering.

As part the festival’s 10th anniversary celebrations in 2010 – joining the prestigious ranks of Fabric and, um, us! – the crew behind Global Gathering are sharing their accumulated knowledge with punters across the globe, with their guide to British festival slang.

Ahead of the 2010 festival – headlined by Faithless and Dizzee Rascal – Global Gathering put out a call to those UK party-folk that’d attended past festivals, asking fans to contribute to the festival lexicon with slang they’ve heard at dance festivals and clubs.

You can check out the extensive list below, full of some classics – “All gone *Pete Tong” – and others that just make us laugh – “Mum ‘n bass”, and then let us know if there’s any vernacular specific to Australian clubs that could go in a local dance music dictionary.

• Monkey juggler The lone festival dancer, dancing wildly to a rhythm only he can hear
• Camp Tramp He hasn’t washed, hasn’t changed his clothes for three days and now here he is, begging for ciggies.
• The tent commandment Thou shalt not leave the putting up of thy tent until 3 in the morning
• Trespassing out Passing out in a tent that is not your own. You don’t know how you got there. You don’t know who these people next to you are….
• The Ejector Selector Bouncer
• Tesco disco Club where everybody’s ‘stacking the shelves’
• Doomcore Very dark techno genre – often played at clubs with names like ‘3rd World War’
• Shape Shifter Particularly bad dancer with no particular style
• Keeping it Tidy Keeping yourself nice and not ‘losing it’ in a club
• Luft-wafter A topless German techno enthusiast with body odour issues
• Mum ‘n’ Bass A woman of advanced years still giving it large on the dancefloor
• Big Fish Little Fish Cardboard Box Popular early rave dance
• Shed A new music style- somewhere between house and garage
• All gone Pete Tong Everything’s gone wrong
• All tong gone Pete Wrong Everything’s gone very, very wrong indeed
• It’s All Gravy Everything is cool
• Beefa Ibiza
• Neckless wonder Bouncer
• Moon-burnt Pale from too much clubbing
• A bit chish and fips A confused state
• Ounce-bounce Overweight dancer
• The Crapocalypse When you enter a festival/club toilet, desperate, only to find it unbelievably filthy and without any paper
• Rave flu Popular affliction affecting the hardcore clubber and the cause of many Mondays off work
• Giving it ‘Shaggy’ Adopting the expression and refrain of Jamaican popstar Shaggy when a bouncer has smelled a cigarette and is searching around you – “it wasn’t me”
• Hooves Decent speakers; “they hoof it”
• Dibble Those who confiscate hooves
• Nice one Party without dibble
• Golden Hour An hour before the club closes, best chance to pull
• Dance-apella A dance performed without music. Usually absent-mindedly, or to burn off excess energy.
• Deja-moo The feeling you’ve seen that cow somewhere before at another rave.
• Disco nap Going to sleep one or two hours before a big night of clubbing.
• On a mission A trip to the shops to buy food at 4am – usually preceeded by an hour long debate on who will undertake the ‘mission’