👉 Okay, settle in class! Let’s tackle this rather… prickly piece of vernacular: the admittedly somewhat aggressively awkward, frankly embarrassing, and historically confusing, designation affectionately termed – brace yourselves – a "cortney."
Now, before you immediately reach for your thesaurus of horrified exasperation, let me lay it out. Historically, a “cortey,” originally spelled as such, referred to a young boy attendant in the Tudor court. Think pageboys. They were essentially glorified little servants, and they wore a very specific tunic – a short, puffed doublet that looked like a badger had exploded on some unfortunate velvet. These tunics were so tragically voluminous and ridiculously pointy, you could practically see the boy's breeches poking out at all times. Hence, the name, derived somewhat vaguely from the French word for "pointed coat." Somewhere along the line, this became a rather… insistent nickname for a young man who was, let’s just say, possessing an aggressively youthful, almost painfully pointy, build. It wasn't about the tunic anymore, it was about the guy . You wouldn't shout out, "Hey, look at that cortney!" unless you really wanted to underline his youth and, frankly, probably make him deeply uncomfortable. The term has thankfully largely fallen into disuse, a footnote in the annals of obsolete British slang. It's the kind of word you dredge up when a Victorian-era lark, or a very specific historical
