[hildea]

Originally Posted by Quoth

A search suggests that name badges or tags originated in USA Fast Food Franchises, which took off in the 1950s, but the earliest chains seem to have started about 1919 to 1922 in the USA.
However I can't find any information suggesting when the use of name badges or tags started for staff serving customers, so I'd not have put it in a story set in 1909.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions! This was the author's debut novel. I wish the publisher (it was a big one) had set an editor with some experience with the period to read through -- it could have been quite good, but the reading experience was ruined for me by lots of anachronisms of this type.

Originally Posted by Catlady

OMG, no thank you; I will never read Heyer if those paragraphs are indicative of her writing!

I did look for especially slang-heavy paragraphs. The ones preceding the last quote are here (context: Louisa wants her brother Alverstoke to host a ball for Louisa's daughter Jane, he refuses):

‘Have you no proper feeling?’ she said tragically.

He had drawn an enamel snuff-box from his pocket, and was critically studying the painting on its lid. ‘No, none at all. I wonder if I made a mistake when I purchased this? I liked it at the time, but I begin to find it a trifle insipid.’ He sighed, and opened the box, with a practised flick of his thumb. ‘And I most assuredly do not like this mixture,’ he said, inhaling an infinitesimal pinch, and dusting his fingers with an expression of distaste. ‘You will say, of course, that I should have known better than to have permitted Mendlesham to thrust his Sort upon me, and you are perfectly right: one should always mix one’s own.’ He got up. ‘Well, if that’s all, I’ll take my leave of you.’

‘It is not all!’ she uttered, her colour much heightened. ‘I knew how it would be, of course – oh, I knew!’

‘I imagine you might, but why the devil you wasted my time –’

‘Because I hoped that for once in your life you might show some – some sensibility! some apprehension of what is due to your family! even some affection for poor Jane!’

‘Rainbow-chasing, Louisa! My lack of sensibility has distressed you for years; I haven’t the least affection for your poor Jane, whom I should be hard put to it to recognise, if I met her unawares; and I’ve yet to learn that the Buxteds are members of my family.’

‘Am I not a member of your family?’ she demanded. ‘Do you forget that I am your sister?’

‘No: I’ve never been granted the opportunity to forget it. (and then the quote above)

Originally Posted by Quoth

Also some words used today didn't mean the same to Austin or her contemporaries. Sometimes it's obvious from context. So it's harder than a vocabulary.

"Gay" and "queer" are words which have shifted meaning. Some old passages become unintentionally suggestive And "boner" meant embarrassing mistake in the 1950s, resulting in this :

Originally Posted by A Batman comic from 1951

So, they laugh at my boner, will they?! I'll show them how many boners the Joker can make!

Originally Posted by CRussel

Ultimately, the slang is one of the least important elements of a Heyer Regency. For me, the humour is the part I like the best.

I agree. She has a bit of Austen's acerbic view of people's weaknesses (Austen did it better, but Heyer does it quite well).

I usually don't mind idiosyncratic language. I wonder if that's because most of my reading is in a foreign language. English is already weird and extremely far from my native language, so weird variants of English don't make that much difference