Still, I’d like to think she actually dressed like Minerva on days out. A serviceable cuirass, a shield for all weather, and an owl peeping out from under her helmet.

Not just Victorians/Edwards, of course. As a child, I was told that ‘horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies glow (or glisten)’. The earliest uses of the saying I can find are from the Gilded Age of America.

And my favourite, ‘Fresh from the Salon’ Dyche (1774).

‘AI Doll’ Dyche (1802)

‘Young Boris Johnson’ Dyche (also 1764, a bumper year for Dyches)

‘Demon-Possessed’ Dyche (1764)

‘Stoned at 10AM’ Dyche (1788)

It’s not all fun and games, though. Moxon reports that a workman was once whacked ‘with so much violence, that he presently Pissed Blood, and shortly after dyed of it’.

Maybe HR departments are a good thing.

If someone refuses to pay a solace, ‘The Workmen take him by force, and lay him on his Belly’ over a stone block, while another uses a paperboard to administer ‘Eleven blows on his Buttocks’.

Grose offers a synonym from Gloucester: MUCKSHUT. But I’m with Exmoor on this one.