The history of bingo
Dating back to the 1530s, bingo is a national staple in the UK, but it didn’t arrive on our shores until centuries after it was invented. The game started life as Italy’s version of the national lottery, evolving through the French courts through the 1700s and later migrating to Great Britain as a simple social pastime.
Originally known as Housey-Housey in the UK, the game rose to popularity around the turn of the 20th century. When the game was re-imported into the country via American travelling fairs which were rife in this period, the name changed to bingo. This sparked the development of community bingo halls in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and today you can play games of bingo online via virtual halls and specialist smartphone apps which is helping to maintain the game’s popularity into the 21st century.
Given its diverse heritage and nationwide appeal, bingo has been developed with specific terminology which reflects aspects of its roots and unites gameplayers on a global scale. Use this guide to gen up on the most important lingo for easy participation and greater enjoyment!
Common bingo terms
- Bingo – the story goes that the American toy salesman who took the game to the US, Edwin Lowe, changed the name from ‘Beano’ to ‘Bingo’ after a friend called out the wrong word in excitement during a game in 1929.
- 90-ball – this indicates that there are 90 numbers in the game, which is the traditional UK amount while in the US 75-ball bingo is the preferred format.
- Card and dauber – the ticket with your random numbers on, and the tool you use to mark off the numbers as they’re called.
- Free space – the term used for the empty squares between your numbers.
Learning bingo lingo
The phrases used to announce the numbers in bingo in the UK largely stem from the characterful colloquial dialect Cockney rhyming slang because the game was especially popular in that area in the latter half of the 20th century. Certain numbers related to contemporary pop culture references from television shows to songs.
Learning ‘bingo lingo’ is crucial to keeping pace with the game in an authentic setting, although in online versions the numbers flash on screen alongside the phrases. Here are a few of the most unusual and amusing bingo names for numbers:
- Dirty Gertie, 30 – a song sung by the allied troops during World War II
- Ghandi’s breakfast, 80 – because Ghandi supposedly ‘ate nothing’
- Halfway there, 45 – there are 90 balls in bingo which when halved is 45
- The Lord is my shepherd, 23 – a reference to Psalm 23 in the Bible
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