I need to be a little honest here. I may have gotten a little over-excited about the OED update. Maybe. That, though, was because they've been really good in the past. This time, however, it was all a little bit bland. By all means, have a look for yourself, but there was little of interest I could find.
The best of the lot was "generation Y", the kids born after so-called "generation X", which doubles up in meaning as "generation why", the ones who've got answers at their fingertips. Naturally, this lead me to ask what happens after "generation Z"... Do we start again? Do we use numbers? I say we should find a sponsor for each. We could start, in an age of sugary foods and obesity, with "generation M&M". Or not...
In order to clear this gloom and doom, I say we throw some light insults. More to the point, I say we clear up the strange and interesting background behind some. Ever heard someone described as "po-faced"? I have. Any idea what that actually means? Neither do I. Let's take a quick look...
There's a couple of explanations (as usual) various people have put forward to explain the origin of the puzzling bit here: "po". The first of these is the archaic little number "poh", pronounced how it looks. It means to reject something contemptuously, in other words telling someone to shove it with a look. Later in its life, it came to have the spelling "pooh", but I assure you it's got nothing to do with the bear, unless he finds anything particularly contemptible...
Alternatively, Lady Gaga could be onto something. There's every chance that "po" could simply be a contraction of "poker". Then again, there's a bit of a difference between a look of hatred and a blank expression, in my experience, so how could the two explain the same word? I'd say it all boils down to personal use of "po-faced" at this stage. Which ever face you consider to be "po" will determine its origin for you.
There is another option, though. Yes, history really has spoiled us this time. Perhaps the most logical root is the mediaeval word "po". It's the same spelling, and its meaning fits perfectly. What is it? Chamber pot. To be "po-faced", then, is to have a mug like a bog. It's plain, it's simple, and it's a damn fine insult. What's not to like?
I may be a tad biased here. Don't let my preferences stop you choosing any backstory you think best fitting. Even now, when you next call someone "po-faced", it could be the greatest testament to their stoic visage, or a bash at their potty-shaped ears. The choice, dear reader, is entirely yours. Stay po-faced when confronting the sceptics, and they'll run away pretty quickly.
TTFN.
Showing posts with label linguitics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label linguitics. Show all posts
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Monday, 1 February 2010
And Now, Without Referencing Monty Python Once...
I've not been well today, it's sad to report. Indeed, I had a headache which made me as "sick as a parrot". Except... well, it didn't. With the phrase in my head, I decided to poke around to find some origins for it, and came up with more than one surprise. Take a look at this, because I reckon you'll all have found something else to say...
The first job is to find the oldest form we can of our phrase, which is actually "sick as a dog". I'm informed that it dates back to 1705, although I'm unable to confirm the source. This, however, seems reasonable enough to me, and I'm not particularly bothered as to which disease-ridden street animal started the whole thing off in the first place. Dogs, though haven't been treated well in our literary history ("gone to the dogs", "in the dog house", "dog tired"), so I wouldn't be surprised if there were scruffy mutts involved in the process somewhere.
Once I'd got that far, I kept poking my nose about. Strangely, the American internet-goers (I've no idea if there are any reading this yet, but I'd like confirmation on the things I say about y'all) had never heard of this particular idiom, and were baffled by the meaning. Now, it might be a little hasty, but an idiom from 1705 not used across the pond? I'd call that a British origin. "Sick as a parrot" keeps very much to this trend.
We've all watched sports on the telly, and we've all enjoyed watching an old commentator getting too excited by the action on the pitch. It's in the heat of the moment, that tantalising moment in which glory is won and hopes dashed, that "sick as a parrot" is said to have been born. The commentator, with "over the moon" already firmly under the increasing girth of his belt, needs an antonym, an opposite. So comes "sick as a parrot", a phrase ready-made for moments of bitter disappointment and utter trouncing.
I should point out, if you ever intend to use the phrase, that it's rarely used outside of a sporty or light-hearted sense. I take no responsibility for angry relatives at a funeral, when you describe the passing of a loved one as making you feel "sick as a parrot". It's too jovial. Pull your socks up.
Continuing as usual, I thought I'd dive a little deeper into the pool of language (don't worry, there's always a lifeguard at hand). The uneducated man takes the phrase to have its roots at face value, considering the "parrot" in question to be "sick". This, however, is clearly... hang on... Psittacosis? Never heard of it. "Parrot disease"? That's right, folks, there's a disease out there notorious for being passed to humans by their evil avian overlords. Maybe being sick as a parrot has a connection. Coincidence? I think not...
So there you have it. Turns out I wasn't "sick as a parrot", after all. That said, I know people out there who use the phrase as such, so perhaps one day... but who am I, oh reader, to change the course of language? As you were, but bear what I have written in mind!
TTFN
The first job is to find the oldest form we can of our phrase, which is actually "sick as a dog". I'm informed that it dates back to 1705, although I'm unable to confirm the source. This, however, seems reasonable enough to me, and I'm not particularly bothered as to which disease-ridden street animal started the whole thing off in the first place. Dogs, though haven't been treated well in our literary history ("gone to the dogs", "in the dog house", "dog tired"), so I wouldn't be surprised if there were scruffy mutts involved in the process somewhere.
Once I'd got that far, I kept poking my nose about. Strangely, the American internet-goers (I've no idea if there are any reading this yet, but I'd like confirmation on the things I say about y'all) had never heard of this particular idiom, and were baffled by the meaning. Now, it might be a little hasty, but an idiom from 1705 not used across the pond? I'd call that a British origin. "Sick as a parrot" keeps very much to this trend.
We've all watched sports on the telly, and we've all enjoyed watching an old commentator getting too excited by the action on the pitch. It's in the heat of the moment, that tantalising moment in which glory is won and hopes dashed, that "sick as a parrot" is said to have been born. The commentator, with "over the moon" already firmly under the increasing girth of his belt, needs an antonym, an opposite. So comes "sick as a parrot", a phrase ready-made for moments of bitter disappointment and utter trouncing.
I should point out, if you ever intend to use the phrase, that it's rarely used outside of a sporty or light-hearted sense. I take no responsibility for angry relatives at a funeral, when you describe the passing of a loved one as making you feel "sick as a parrot". It's too jovial. Pull your socks up.
Continuing as usual, I thought I'd dive a little deeper into the pool of language (don't worry, there's always a lifeguard at hand). The uneducated man takes the phrase to have its roots at face value, considering the "parrot" in question to be "sick". This, however, is clearly... hang on... Psittacosis? Never heard of it. "Parrot disease"? That's right, folks, there's a disease out there notorious for being passed to humans by their evil avian overlords. Maybe being sick as a parrot has a connection. Coincidence? I think not...
So there you have it. Turns out I wasn't "sick as a parrot", after all. That said, I know people out there who use the phrase as such, so perhaps one day... but who am I, oh reader, to change the course of language? As you were, but bear what I have written in mind!
TTFN
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Groovy, man...
This post is a half requested one, and by that I mean it came up in conversation with a friend, and I didn't have a clue what to say. Fearing for my life, I ran away to learn all I could, but the discussion had moved on over that weekend... Anyway, what I have decided to do with this new-found pretty knowledge is to pass it on to those who have strayed onto the internet, that it may save their bacon too one day. Enjoy.
Unlike the other posts I've made, there's no proverbs here. Rather, I've taken something a little shorter, but just as interesting: one word. That's right, one word. Naturally, that's going to make this ramble a little shorter than the other, but hey, let's not run a marathon every time we go jogging. So without further ado, I shove a word in your face and tell you to love it. That word, ladies and gentlemen, is...
"Cool"
Yeah, that's right dude. Far out. It's so in the ether, I put some Jazz on just to help write all this up. Bear in mind that I'm only going to yack about the slang way we use "cool", and that's a little more relevant than you might have thought. Most of us have embarrassing (and hopefully distant) relatives who go on about Jazz, and how it invented modern music, etc etc. The point here is, you guessed it, it's also responsible for the word "cool" in its modern sense.
It was none other than Miles Davies, the man himself, who gave the world "Cool Jazz" in that swinging year 1949. In this sub-genre, the styles and rhythms are even more relaxed than usual, which in turn sounds relaxed, if a little of an acquired taste... Love it or hate it, it's there. An influential chap like Miles could pluck a word, change it's meaning, and make it stick.
If nothing else, we can at least see how closely linked the new and old meanings of "cool" are. They both have an secondary meaning in their use, implying that everything's just right. A "cool day" certainly doesn't have gale-force winds, bush fire, and nor is anyone stuck under a foot of snow. You can't complain about a "cool day", really. If it's "cool", it's good, regardless of which version we're looking at.
Once we've gotten over the Jazz stage, which is still in use, we get the kids on the street involved. As anyone who owns tweed clothes and leather armchairs will tell you, where there's kids, there's trouble. Sad to say, this lot do nothing to change that elitist snobbery. At some point in the 50's, the gangs of America decided to take "cool" and use it to describe a truce in a gang war. You'll note that I'm not giving it a date here, and for good reason. See, the media first used the phrase in '58, and I'd put good money on it having been used for a lot longer. It's usually a few years before these things get noticed by out-of-touch journalists. There's a nice example, the last one I have for "cool" in this sense also describes gang-fighters as "gang-bangers", but that WAS 1993...
At this point, I take a moment to look at the word "cool" as we've just looked at it, with gangs and what, and isn't it ominous? It sounds to me like letting a machine gun cool down: just because it isn't being used now doesn't mean it won't spit lead in your face later. It's volatile, and most definitely not permanent. I'm not going to push the analogy any further, you can do that if you so wish.
Which brings us bang up to date with our modern use of the word cool, which started in the 60s, and has remained as a staple of our day to day language ever since. I'm sure I don't need to explain it's meaning to your here, oh inevitably popular reader. If I do, I think you need to spend a little less time on blogs like this. We like it because it's down the middle. It's not tense, but it's not reckless. It's not strict, yet it hasn't completely let go. It's just.. cool, ya know?
I'm pretty sure that's an exhaustive account of a single word. It's not the oldest, the prettiest, the most significant, or the most life-changing, but what would we do without it? Its meaning's still in flux, as far as I can see, so who knows what it might mean fifty years from now. Whatever, man. At least we know where it came from.
Chill out for now.
Unlike the other posts I've made, there's no proverbs here. Rather, I've taken something a little shorter, but just as interesting: one word. That's right, one word. Naturally, that's going to make this ramble a little shorter than the other, but hey, let's not run a marathon every time we go jogging. So without further ado, I shove a word in your face and tell you to love it. That word, ladies and gentlemen, is...
"Cool"
Yeah, that's right dude. Far out. It's so in the ether, I put some Jazz on just to help write all this up. Bear in mind that I'm only going to yack about the slang way we use "cool", and that's a little more relevant than you might have thought. Most of us have embarrassing (and hopefully distant) relatives who go on about Jazz, and how it invented modern music, etc etc. The point here is, you guessed it, it's also responsible for the word "cool" in its modern sense.
It was none other than Miles Davies, the man himself, who gave the world "Cool Jazz" in that swinging year 1949. In this sub-genre, the styles and rhythms are even more relaxed than usual, which in turn sounds relaxed, if a little of an acquired taste... Love it or hate it, it's there. An influential chap like Miles could pluck a word, change it's meaning, and make it stick.
If nothing else, we can at least see how closely linked the new and old meanings of "cool" are. They both have an secondary meaning in their use, implying that everything's just right. A "cool day" certainly doesn't have gale-force winds, bush fire, and nor is anyone stuck under a foot of snow. You can't complain about a "cool day", really. If it's "cool", it's good, regardless of which version we're looking at.
Once we've gotten over the Jazz stage, which is still in use, we get the kids on the street involved. As anyone who owns tweed clothes and leather armchairs will tell you, where there's kids, there's trouble. Sad to say, this lot do nothing to change that elitist snobbery. At some point in the 50's, the gangs of America decided to take "cool" and use it to describe a truce in a gang war. You'll note that I'm not giving it a date here, and for good reason. See, the media first used the phrase in '58, and I'd put good money on it having been used for a lot longer. It's usually a few years before these things get noticed by out-of-touch journalists. There's a nice example, the last one I have for "cool" in this sense also describes gang-fighters as "gang-bangers", but that WAS 1993...
At this point, I take a moment to look at the word "cool" as we've just looked at it, with gangs and what, and isn't it ominous? It sounds to me like letting a machine gun cool down: just because it isn't being used now doesn't mean it won't spit lead in your face later. It's volatile, and most definitely not permanent. I'm not going to push the analogy any further, you can do that if you so wish.
Which brings us bang up to date with our modern use of the word cool, which started in the 60s, and has remained as a staple of our day to day language ever since. I'm sure I don't need to explain it's meaning to your here, oh inevitably popular reader. If I do, I think you need to spend a little less time on blogs like this. We like it because it's down the middle. It's not tense, but it's not reckless. It's not strict, yet it hasn't completely let go. It's just.. cool, ya know?
I'm pretty sure that's an exhaustive account of a single word. It's not the oldest, the prettiest, the most significant, or the most life-changing, but what would we do without it? Its meaning's still in flux, as far as I can see, so who knows what it might mean fifty years from now. Whatever, man. At least we know where it came from.
Chill out for now.
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