Spud gun after World War II. Cossman, the brother-in-law of "Uncle" Milton Levine, discovered there was a potato glut at the time, and through an advertising campaign sold two million spud guns in six months. Spud gun A spud gun is a small children's toy gun used to fire a fragment of potato. To operate, one punctures the surface of a potato with the gun's hollow tip and pries out a small pellet which fits snugly in the muzzle. Squeezing the grip causes a small build-up of air pressure inside the toy which propels the projectile. The devices are usually short-range and
Back slang Back slang Back slang is an English coded language in which the written word is spoken phonemically backwards. Back slang is thought to have originated in Victorian England, being used mainly by market sellers, such as butchers and greengrocers, to have private conversations behind their customers' backs and pass off lower quality goods to less observant customers. The first published reference to it was in 1851, in Henry Mayhew's "London Labour and the London Poor". Some back slang has entered standard English. For example, the term "yob" was originally back slang for "boy". Back slang is not only restricted to