The Complete Sherlock Holmes

The Complete Sherlock Holmes

I am reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes, which is a compendium of all the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories, and I am sometimes startled by expressions that I would have assumed were much more modern. For example, in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, the term "nark" is used to refer to a police informant. When I first heard the term used in the 1960s to refer to an undercover police officer, I assumed that it was a modern derivation of the term "narcotics"--but I am now inclined to think otherwise.

On the other hand, another short story collected in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes includes an expression which has a pretty clear meaning to modern readers--but no, it meant something quite different back then. A certain disreputable character is described as "so far down Queer Street that may never find his way back." But back then it meant that you were deeply in debt.