As I’ve been learning to ring church bells, I’ve also been learning the jargon. As my beginners’ guide warns me, “Not only do [ringers] use some special words, but they also use ordinary words with special meanings, and they sometimes use several different words for almost the same thing.” I am ashamed to say how much I enjoy using the same words that ringers before me have used for hundreds of years. I comfort myself that it’s a good thing to use bell-ringing jargon within the bell tower, as long as I don’t expect a non-ringer to understand it.
