Dated

The Code of the Woosters was published in 1938, and I got round to reading it last week.It’s a great P G Wodehouse etc etc, but noticeably I needed a dictionary to read it. Those 88 years have pushed many words down into the “dated” section in the dictionary definitions.It’s not old English or anything, and you get the sense from the context. “If we don’t look slippy [be quick], I shall lose him”; or “fight them off with a blackjack [a flexible lead-filled truncheon]”.This one stumped me:On the spot, ready to the last button, at twelve pip emma.“Pip emma”?You’re ahead of me, of course. It’s PM. 12 PM.There was a phonetic alphabet in use before the standardisation used today.I did not know that, but presumably I would have if I’d read it closer to the release date.