Wendy houses

Saturday a week ago, while reading Roald Dahl’s memoir Boy: Tales of Childhood, I was pleased to stumble across a British phrase new to me: “Wendy house,” meaning a child’s playhouse. I made a mental note but forgot to mention it to Sydney.

The next day, Sydney told me she just had stumbled across an interesting British phrase in Barbara Vine’s novel A Dark-Adapted Eye: “Wendy house,” meaning – well, you know what it means.

Wendy houses get their name from Wendy in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Upon the publication this year of Alan Moore’s long-awaited novel Lost Girls, about the sexual adventures of the fantasy heroines Wendy, Dorothy and Alice, the phrase “Wendy house” may gain a whole new meaning.