The Cairn
drusk
A station slur for the displaced and refugee lines — ugly, compact, and never translated.
In full
Worn-down Station Common; nobody on the page is ever told where the word came from, and its history is inferred from how people flinch rather than from anything it plainly means. It names the displaced — and, by extension, anyone the speaker holds to have brought their trouble with them. It survives in the official record because statements are quoted verbatim; Yoss declines to strike it, on the grounds that a record should carry what a man chose to put in it. By the boom years it has hardened from a docker's insult into a position people hold.
Key facts
- A genuine slur — phonetically compact, semantically opaque.
- Enters the official record verbatim, because statements quote what was said.
- Yoss declines to strike it: the record should carry what a man chose to put in it.
- Ages from a docker's insult into an organised current.