Gloriously unpredictable? Fucking rubbish, more like.

After a spring or two, the horse passaged and reared, and lighting on a flat slab of rock which cropped up in the middle of the road, slipped sideways and fell with a loud crash […]

The differences between slang, colloquialism and jargon are not clear-cut.

Fight it—fight it with all my might—and I was getting the everliving hell beaten out of me!