Seven Words That Unlock A Christmas Carol

Every December, A Christmas Carol comes back. Classes read it, families read it aloud, and theaters stage it. Most of us know the story before we open the book. Scrooge, three ghosts, and Tiny Tim.

But Dickens wrote it in 1843 for readers who already knew things we don’t. When a modern reader skips past a word, the story still makes sense, but it loses something. Here are seven words from the book, and what they add once you know them.

1. Stave

Open the book and you won’t find chapters. You’ll find “Stave One: Marley’s Ghost.” A stave is a set of lines in written music. Dickens called his book a carol, so he divided it like a song, with each part having its own mood. It’s a joke on the title page that most readers never notice.

2. Ironmongery

The first page has one of the best jokes in the book:

“Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.”

Ironmongery is metal hardware: nails, tools, and pans. Dickens is poking fun at the old saying. If anything is dead, surely it’s a coffin-nail. Once you know the word, the opening reads as playful rather than grim.

3. Union workhouses

When two gentlemen ask Scrooge to give to the poor, he answers with questions:

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.

“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”

Union workhouses were places where the homeless and unemployed were sent to work in exchange for food and a bed. Conditions were harsh, and families were often split up inside. Scrooge isn’t only being rude here. He’s saying the poor already have somewhere to go, and that somewhere was a place people dreaded.

4. The Treadmill and the Poor Law

In the same scene, Scrooge asks if “the Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour.” The Treadmill was a large wheel in prisons that inmates walked on for hours, sometimes to grind flour. The Poor Law was the law that set up the workhouses. Dickens wanted his readers to hear how cold that sounds. Later, the Ghost of Christmas Present throws Scrooge’s own words back at him.

5. Bob

“Bob had but fifteen ‘Bob’ a week himself.”

Bob was slang for a shilling. A pound was divided into 20 shillings until 1971. So Bob Cratchit is paid fifteen bob a week, roughly £100 ($130) in today’s money, to support a family of eight. Dickens is making a pun on the clerk’s name, and also showing how little Scrooge pays him.

6. Comforter

“wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter”

To an American reader, a comforter is a quilt for a bed. In Victorian London it was a long neck scarf. Without that, you might picture Bob Cratchit walking home through the snow wrapped in his bedding.

7. Smoking bishop

The morning after Christmas, a changed Scrooge tells Bob they’ll talk about his raise “over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop.” Smoking bishop was a hot Christmas drink of red wine or port, oranges or lemons, sugar, and cloves. A man who wouldn’t spend on coal for his clerk’s fire is now offering to share a warm drink with him. It’s one line, but it shows how far he has come.

Why the words matter

None of these words is hard. Each one is simply out of date. Look them up and the jokes land, the social criticism becomes clear, and Scrooge’s change means more.

That’s why our edition of A Christmas Carol includes a glossary of over 200 words and phrases, each defined the way Dickens used it. There’s also a character guide and an introduction to Victorian England. The text is complete and unabridged. If you’re reading it this December, with a class or by the fire, you won’t have to guess.