Billingsgate

I visited a friend from Michigan State University in the summer of 1979 as he pursued graduate studies at the University of Sussex. He attended class and worked on his dissertation during the day, and I traveled to London to take in the sites. It was in the course of one of these excursions that I stumbled into Billingsgate Fish Market. 

I'd long been a logophile, so you can only imagine my delight. When I met my buddy and his three graduate school classmates at the pub in Brighton that night, I had to tell them. I'd laid eyes on Billingsgate, the fish market that had given birth to a colorful 25-dollar word! All four of my hyperarticulate interlopers--the American and the three Brits--stared at me blankly. "Billingsgate? What does that mean? It's a fish market?!" 

[In response to annotation to "fishwife," the Word for the Day for June 24, 2013.]