Is "posh" really an acronym? | WORD MYTHS
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 มิ.ย. 2024
- Jess Zafarris and Rob Watts (aka RobWords) bust some etymology myths:
💰 Does "tip" mean To Insure Promptness?
🤬 Is the F word an acronym?
🦋 Was a butterfly ever a "flutterby"?
Find out in Words Unravelled.
👂LISTEN: podfollow.com/words-unravelle...
or search for "Words Unravelled" wherever you get your podcasts.
==LINKS==
Rob's TH-cam channel: / robwords
Jess' Useless Etymology blog: uselessetymology.com/
Rob on X: x.com/robwordsyt
Jess on TikTok: tiktok.com/@jesszafarris
#etymology #debunking #podcast
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Note from Jess: Thanks for the many comments noting that the "de-" in "debunk" is more about "removing" or "eliminating" false information rather than acting as an intensifier. You're correct, that was William E. Woodward's intent when he popularized the term in his 1923 work, "Bunk."
I was just about to do that, too! HaHaHa Glad to know that I wasn't wrong.
I don't care for the term debunk and don't use it, but I love referring to silly talk as bunk!
By the way, "bunk" is in contemporary use, in expressions like "that's total bunk!" And by the by the way, this is discussed briefly in a Seinfeld episode.
I always assumed that the word "tip" came from the convention of tipping your hat as a polite guesture. So rather than literally "tipping your hat" you would, instead, just leave a gratuity. I could be wrong because, the first time I heard the word "precarious" I wrongfully assumed it would be spelled "prickhairyarse"
Allow me to share the legendary story of Sir Douglas Bader, the remarkable RAF ace who achieved aerial victories despite losing both his legs in a plane crash. During a talk at a girls’ school about his World War II experiences as a pilot, Bader recounted an intense battle:
“So there were two of these fokkers behind me, three fokkers to my right, and another fokker on the left.”
At this point, the headmistress intervened, correcting him:
Headmistress: “Ladies, Fokker was a German aircraft.”
And with unwavering wit, Sir Douglas Bader replied:
Sir Douglas Bader: “That may be, madam, but these fokkers were in Messerschmitt's!”
A lovely story ♡ thank u
Bader lost both his legs after showing off in an air stunt after the war. He certainly had both his legs during it.
@@andrewbowman4611 1931 (when he crashed) is before the war he famously fought in
I don’t even care if this story is true-it made me laugh out loud.
Sorry, that’s not true. Fokker was Dutch, not German. Even if you know nothing about aviation, 30 seconds with Google would tell you that.
In French Canadian we have an expression for rich people, Grosses poches. Big pocket. I guess it has early French origins and was narrowed down to Poche-posh for meaning rich.
Now that is an interesting idea.
That's the most credible origin for "posh" that I've heard so far.
I was thinking during the vid. that 'posh' sounds very French in origin and still think so.
RE POSH….we were on holiday many years ago, and the couple in the camping space next to us were having a very bad day, and after being berated by her husband for every thing she did (clearly not knowing much about camping), the wife finally shouted out “Piss off,Shit Head” . It became our word for a while, when things were tense…..calling each other Posh did a lot to diffuse situations.
🤣
I've always heard "debunk" used as a verb meaning "to refute or disprove false claims". Definitely an anti-bunk word, not an intensifier.
Correct. this is the only sense in which I have ever heard it used (UK).
That's how I've heard it too.
You can't debunk Asheville. I go to Asheville often; I went there today and bought some bread.
Same, I grew up in the state of Minnesota, USA and that's how I've always used debunk. Also, though I'd never heard bunkum, bunk is definitely still used, often in something like the phrase 'that's a load of bunk', meaning, what you're saying is untrue or garbage.
But when you debunk a false claim, in the sense that you've attested, you aren't stopping it from being bunk. That is, you aren't making the bunkness go away. You're making it bunk, in the sense of showing it to be false or nonsense. In which case the 'de-' would be acting as an intensifier. At least that's what I think she meant when she described it as an intensifier in 'debunk'.
Of course, an alternative possibility might be that, rather than removing the bunkness of the false claim, you are nevertheless causing the false claim to be removed from consideration. If so, you might say that you are debunking in the away-bunking sense...
Of course, what is she talking about ?
The name for a person who keeps Hawks and Falcons is a Falconer - not a Hawker - unless they travel around selling birds . ..
🤣
Anti-Hawk bigotry!
I haven't gotten to that part, but does Jess know what a jess is?
Falconer for log-winged falcons, austringer for short-winged hawks.
@@pierreabbat6157 That would be ironic that someone with the name Jess, wouldn't know what a Falconer is.
Etymology nerd here. I'm in love with this show. Host repoire and flowing banter is engaging.
Thank you for tuning in!
Yes the *rapport* between the hosts is great
@@wardsdotnetAh. Was going to ask what "repoire" was...
It's so pleasant listening to two eminently articulate people chat. Thanks!
Rob, it's kind of adorable, seeing you get so flustered over "curse words."
I love the way Rob looks distinctly uncomfortable hearing and saying swear words and Jess doesn't seem to give a **** ; well you know what I mean...
Well, she did write the book on it!
Yes, I noticed his flushed face.
@@rodgervsaffell2085 It's a bit cute
And yet, he has no problem discussing how much butterfly excrement it would take to cover a piece of toast.
I always thought that tip came from tipping your cap or your hat to get coins put in it
I've just looked up mongooses on Wikipedia and it turns out that they're not closely related to weasels at all. In fact their closest relatives are hyenas.
But they LOOK more like weasels than hyenas.
Interesting, thank you!
They're mongeese aren't they?
I used to work with a woman named Crapper. Her husband told me that Thomas Crapper was an ancestor of his, and who am I to doubt him.
Some years ago, on a trip down the Thames in a tour boat, the guide very earnestly explained that 'wharf' stood for 'Ware House And River Frontage'. Er, no...
Yes. Everyone knows it means 'Klingon who can't fight melee worth a tosh.'
I'm from rural Western Massachusetts and I grew up saying "that's a load of bunk." My grandmother thought swearing was a sin, but she "cheated" and skirted the rules by changing the pronunciation of common expressions. So g*d d*mn was "gawl darn" and bullsh*t was "cacablooshis." And of course there was "jeezum crow" and "son of a witch."
I knew my mother was really mad when she said dagnabit or pistol shot 😂
@@stevedrake6529 Yeah ... I never quite understood the idea that when you replace a "bad" word with another word which _everybody_ understands as standing for that word, you've improved anything. Like, are we talking actual magic here?!
Well, it's TECHNICALLY not swearing so...
I recall once my mother called me a SOB. I answered "well you got that right". I won that one :)
A Danish acrynom is 'gravko' = excavator. It literally means 'digging cow' but stems from a excavation company (GRAVEKOMPAGNIET) which was abbreviated to GRAV KO and painted on their equipment, so now an excavator is known to all Danes as a digging cow (gravko) and it even takes plural from 'ko' namely 'køer', so if you have more excavators you have 'gravkøer'.
a lot of British army soldiers served in India many yesrs ago in Victorian times ... some of the Indian language was brought back to the UK, oftentimes as regional slang also depending somewhat upon where their regiments were based in India ... hence Posh originating from India seems to me a more likely explanation than the one given as posh expanding into lots of dosh
Wearing white needs a lot of care by a lot of stuff
Using 'half a penny' to denote great wealth. What I call British understatement.
Speaking of acronyms, I'm surprised nothing was said about "snafu."
A SNAFU ca happen in any organisation, not just the military. The next highest 'rank' of stuff-up is the FUBAB [or FUBAR, as in Saving Private Ryan], short for Fouled Up Beyond All Belief/recognition". The worst is a CMF = Classic [or, Complete] Military Foul-up
I hadn't seen CMF. Although in the military I would expect it to be CMFU
Another level I learned was TARFU
Totally and Royally Fucked Up
So the hierarchy was SNAFU, TARFU and FUBAR
normally fU, royally fu, and finally FU beyond all recognition
There is an early story by P. G. Wodehouse where he uses the word "push" as an adjective, very much as we use "posh" today. A possible source for this "push" may be from a Romany word for "half", as in "push-caroon" meaning "half-crown". Thus, it may have indicated something expensive, in other words, very close to our meaning of "posh".
Love this channel! 🥰 Your discussion on the term 'SHIT' reminds me of a joke:
A man and a woman step on an elevator together. The woman turns to the man and sighs, "T.G.I.F." to which the man looks at her seriously and replies, "S.H.I.T."
The woman is confused and so she says again, "T.G.I.F!" and the man again responds, "S.H.I.T."
Finally, the woman loses her patience and stamps her foot saying, "No, T.G.I.F - you know, Thank Goodness It's Friday?"
The man responds with a smirk, "Naw, S.H.I.T. - sorry, honey, it's Thursday." 💩
Growing up in England we often said OFIT, Oh F*** It’s Thursday!
@@BrinToo lol! 🤣 I'll have to remember that one the next time I forget there's still a whole other working day left!
I am 89, reared by parents who reminded us daily (hourly, minutely?) that how well we spoke would affect how high we could rise in life. Consequently, I have become a language nerd, knowing things like the origins of words like woodchuck, barbeque, and caucus. What a pleasure it is for me to listen to two interesting, educated, and informed people carrying on conversations that go by too quickly. More, please...many, preferably. Is there any truth to Gents Only Ladies Forbidden?
We were brought up in a northern council estate speaking with an 1950s RP accent because our mother knew that when we went to university it would matter. In those days she was correct of course. Even today if you use an RP accent people generally accept your opinions more easily.
But I note that on bbc science programmes a lot of folk from astro physicists, biologists, engineering, to archaeology etc. experts tend to have regional accents rather more than, say, historians or philosophers.
The best way to determine whether a word is likely to be an acronym, is to find out if it exists in other languages. Dutch kolf (German Kolbe) refers to the bent or crooked end of a stick of wood, like the part of a rifle stock that gets shouldered, or the curl on a hockey stick. Several sports or games were played with such sticks and were simply called kolf.
My father jokingly calls asparagus Sparrow Grass, so maybe that is a survival of when it was named that, or maybe its a recoining.
A friend tried to convince my that broccoli was named after (and invented by) the producer of the James Bond films.
I love the NEWSPAPER.
Reminds me of two 'acronyms' for airlines in Europe:
SABENA for such a bloody experience never again.
ALITALIA for always late in take-off always late in arrival. Which was actually true.....
Glorioso
Or the early analogue US TV standard, NTSC = Never Twice the Same Colour
@@stevetrawley3521 At least the US didn't force everyone (millions) to toss their existing B&W TV sets to decode the new color signal. The NTSC solution wasn't the best but it was compatible with the existing infrastructure and deployed base of consumer equipment -- they just had to add the color-burst signal right before the B&W scan line signal. Boom. Done.
My guess for NEWSPAPER would be more on a line of someone in the marketing department trying to be a bit too clever.
@@lohphat Strange. I seem to recall B&W TV sets showing color programming just fine over here in the PAL world.
The U.S. army has been notorious for its use of acronyms. There is a scene in the movie "I was a Male War bride" (1949) in which Cary Grant goes down a corridor, trying to figure out the meaning of the various acronyms he finds on the doors. He is puzzled by the one that says, "L A D I E S."
They surely got it from the Romans, like so many things. The Romans were also inordinately fond of these things. A maybe lesser known one is that Cologne (Köln) was originally founded as _Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium,_ and when people wanted to indicate that stuff was "made in Cologne", they put "CCAA" on things. We still have some of those.
Is that "Lasses And Dames In Embarrassing Sircumstances"
Bunkum is obsolete, maybe, but bunk is not. "Bunk" is still a perfectly current way of... not saying bulsh*t or horsesh*t. :P
"It's just a load of bunk, as it turns out."
...And I don't think Jess quite figured out what debunk is supposed to mean?
I know NYers who regularly use bunkum. Not obsolete.
After Penn and Teller's show "BS", I've fallen into the habit of calling *BALDERDASH.* which is a perfectly presentable word even in polite company even though it means the same thing.
"World Wide Web" has three syllables, but "www" for short has nine syllables.
Yes, it's silly.
"GSW" (four syllables) is short for "gunshot wound" (three syllables).
@@davidhoward4715 Actually, five syllables - "gee, ess, dub, bull, you".
I have heard it pronounced as "dubdubdub". I like that.
@@HotelPapa100 that's how I've been saying it since the WWW was first around. Dubdubdub is so much easier!
I call bunk on debunk. First (I may have heard you wrong there), 'bunk' for nonsense is still very much in use, and 'debunk' is not a heightening, but refers to the act of driving out the bunk. In no way do I feel that this is an orphan negative.
As for the f-bomb: I don't think this is a coincidence, but a potentially very long row of cognates: Swiss German for the verb is "figge", and the same verb can very innocently (though it will draw sniggers from the peanut gallery) be used to stand for 'rub', or 'chafe'. Might have been related to 'beat' at one time, but very much involves friction today. Swiss German is still very close to Middle High German. As with all things Swiss German, disclaimer: True in some dialects, may not be the case in others.
The German version is "ficken", and I heard the exact same etymology.
One acronym I've been told that comes from the military is SNAFU. I'm told it stands for Situation Normal All Fucked Up.
I've loved the RobWords 'casts, they were brilliant but now so much better with Jess - she is simply stunning.
Aw, shucks. - Jess ;)
There's also FUBAR: Fouled (ahem) Up Beyond All Repair
The 'choke' in an artichoke is a mass of sort of hairy fluff in the centre just above the tasty part. It is inedible and has to be removed before cooking. Presumably it is called this because it would choke someone if left in.
Depending on preparation it IS left in, and the eater has to remove it by hemselves. It's also tricky, because in very young artichokes the lower part of the florets (this is what the hairy bits are) is delicate to eat, but you by all means want to avoid the needly bits.
This is a great addition to watching Rob Words, the knowledge and warmth you both have, makes for a great evening watch, and the fact that Jess looks like a baby otter is just a bonus!
Keep up the good work!
The CQ of CQD is used as a general call. Among some radio amateurs, it was supposedly a phonetic "Seek You"
CQ CQ CQ Calling CQ
Exactly, the first think my Grandfather taught me in Morse. He was a Ship's Sparks in the war.
The signal SOS was never three letters, it was a complete signal easy to recognise by ear.
Port Out Starboard Home was part of the lyric of a song the Grandpa sings in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and he is using the acronym as well in the song.
th-cam.com/video/AzEWodlTFq0/w-d-xo.htmlsi=-BJWnw2Wxn0vueHO
Your point being? Clearly the Sherman Brothers, who wrote the music and lyrics for the film, didn't bother to check whether there was any truth in the story before they used it. And why would they? They where writing a comic song, not an etymology thesis.
@@youngmistergrace3378 I think you mistook my post totally. I was sharing a fond memory that was associated with what the speakers were talking about. I made no claim of validity. YMG, you might want to unwad your panties.
Never heard that song. Obviously it was written long after the word posh started being used and is just repeating the folk etymology.
I think the point is that the movie - released in the mid-1960s - popularised the false etymology. My suspicion is that the Sherman brothers knew it was a false etymology, since the comedic song was written for the character of a senile (bordering on deranged) old man. But this didn’t stop viewers of the movie from believing that they had learnt something true.
I have never heard of POSH as stamped on tickets but I have heard of it as being a mnemonic for sailors to allocate cabins. I have also heard of it used to cross the channel, not in the sense of travelling to India. If it is just a mnemonic, there would not be stamped tickets. We used many an aide-mémoire in the navy such as _"Is there any _*_red port left?"_*
Very doubtful that POSH was ever used in any formal capacity. It was a piece of informal knowledge acquired by the well-to-do seasoned traveller between Britain and India/Far East. A modern day equivalent would be the 'tips' proffered on how to get upgraded from economy to first-class on various airlines.
Hi Rob. The best acronym I've heard in my life was in the early 70s. As a young man I served in BAOR at Hildesheim. We had some American soldiers visiting en route to Hannover airport. This was at the time that Vietnam was ending and most of the US soldiers were conscripts. They wear a patch that says US ARMY. One of the soldiers told me it stood for " Uncle Sam Ain't Released Me Yet."
And I've heard 'NAVY' explained as 'Never Again Volunteer Yourself', and 'USMC' as 'Uncle Sam's Misguided Children', with a more disparaging explanation of 'MARINES' as 'My Ass Rides In Navy Equipment, Sir'.
The only American I've heard say "aint" is the guy from Mary Popins. I can't give his real name as the last time I did that in a comment, it got deleted by the algorithm.
@@KenFullman Gor bless ya, that was Dick van Dyke played Bert the chimney sweep.
@@colinp2238 But whenever I mention his name, my comment disappears. I've assume it's because both his first name and the last sylable can be quite rude.
@@KenFullman Dick van Dyke is the actor's name, his full name is Richard Wayne van Dyke.
Cockney rhyming slang is an interesting beast, especially as they usually cut it down to just the first part, so the actual rhyme is obscured, meaning no-one outside those in the know can work it out! Example: someone complaining that "Ooh, me plates are sore". To a cockney, this is obviously his/her feet, as "plates of meat" = "feet", but to an outsider?
This. I always get annoyed when the code is spilled.
@@HotelPapa100 Really had to use my loaf for that one! Nice!
@@kevinmcqueenie7420 I don't really know rhyming slang. Did I accidentally hit something?
@@HotelPapa100 to be honest, probably not! Loaf of bread is slang for head, and I realise now I implied I got your reference. I meant that I didn’t, bad language nerding going on at my end! Been a long day! Revise to “I need to use my loaf for this one!”
Ronnie Barker uses the phrase "I don't give a hangman's" in Open All Hours. It's obviously rhyming slang but what is the meaning?
I discovered this channel this afternoon on my day off. I was looking for some content to relax my mind... and I couldn't leave this channel! I watched several videos, super interesting!!!
I just found Jess's book on Amazon, and it will be delivered tomorrow 🥰
It's so enjoyable to listen to two such intelligent, curious, and humorous people! Best find of the month! 🎉
There are no rude words, only rude thoughts.
I disagree. There are rude words, as well as rude thoughts. The rude words are usually stated/shouted because of rude thoughts.
I was on a forum were would make backronyms from each other's name. Else- eigenwijs lief schattig ezeltje. For example.
I'm mildly miffed that Rob didn't bring up the German for butterfly, Schmetterling.
It has a similar meaning as butterfly, namely "something born from butter", 'Schmetter' being an archaic German word for butter.
You said: "...people smarter than me." I say it should be: "...people smarter than I."
Back in high school, someone told me that f--k came from the Latin word meaning "to plow/plough." And I always assumed it was true because it sounded legit, despite not knowing what that Latin word was. So after hearing this episode, I just looked it up. And it literally shares no letters in common. "Arare." Go me.
Now, how did the Japanese get to know this word... ;-)
As backup for your theories of some words being claimed to be acronyms; my career in the military was full of mnemonics, or "dittys" as they called them, where a word or phrase was chosen to help the individual service member remember information, especially something very important. The "meanings" of SOS and CQD could definitely be an example. A wireless operator being taught to remember "save our souls" seems very efficient. Then two world wars and a deluge of service members back into civilian life teaching their children and grandchildren little nuggets of military life that get passed down, but possibly slightly altered to the reverse of the original creation.
Rob: “Please, no sex or bodily functions. We are British” 😂
You say you're going to talk about that other rude word in the future. Well, I'll see you next Tuesday!
Your series is bloody wonderful. You both bring such gorgeous insights!
It's so refreshing to see Rob embarrassed by curse words. It seems that many people these days use them freely in their everyday speech which assaults my senses. I grew up in the south in the 50's where even young men would never swear in front of a lady. How lovely that was. Then in 5th grade we moved to NJ where I saw the F-word on the side of the school building. I asked the young man walking me home what that word meant. Blushing, He told me to ask my father. My dad told me something that I wonder if you guys could verify. He said that 4 letter words in English that are considered vulger or rude like the F-word and S..T all come from Anglo/Saxon origins and when the Normans came in, they looked down on the A/S and that's how perfectlly normal words became rude, vulger or curse words.
Folk etymology is a delightful mechanism for language evolution.
Talking of spoonerisms, one I love is that killer whales were originally known as whale killers by sailors, and it just switched over time. (and given they are actually a species of dolphin, it makes more sense, even though I know that is basically just down to weird taxonomic rules as they are all cetaceans!)
I guess people would draw the line at calling a sperm whale a 'type of dolphin' ;-)
That's not a spoonerism, though, but, yes, killer whales are whale killers. Since most people refer to all cetaceans as "whales", and even those who subcategorise often include orcas with whales because of their size, it is really a whale killer whale, which is quite a mouthful, and so killer whale makes the most sense. Especially since you don't have to be a whale (or a dolphin) to kill whales.
I am sure many of the people who insist that dolphins are not whales also would insist the American bison is a buffalo. In the end it's just arbitrary, and since this is a video about language, everyone should have realised meaning is defined by how people actually use words, not by how someone else thinks they should be used.
@@hakonsoreide And then there's the whale shark, which looks more like a whale but is in fact a type of shark, so a fish rather than a cetacean. The fish in the biblical story of Jonah could be a whale shark: they have a kind of "holding tank" in their digestive tract that, if the fish is a big enough specimen, could harbor a human for several hours...
Not false etymology, I don't think, but what you mentioned about word changes reminded me of how "island" didn't originally have an S in it until people combined it with "isle".
I think "island" must correspond to the German "Eiland" whereas "isle" corresponds to "Insel".
@@KaiHenningsen Correct.
Loving these podcasts, keep up the good work guys!
I have always found that words are never ‘rude’; it is only those who utilise them who are so… say the Master of English.
In Bootcamp, first 'acronym' they taught us was Never Again Volunteer Yourself.
I love this podcast! So much interesting information! And both Jess and Rob have gorgeous genuine smiles 😊
When someone tells me one of those acronym fables, I run screaming for my OED.
Butterfly is one of those rare words that translate very differently in many languages. Vlinder (Dutch), schmetterling (German), farfalla (Italian), papillon (French), mariposa (Spanish)...
As further evidence against an acronymic origin, 'tag' is called 'tig' in North East England (and Scotland also).
SOS & CQD [I'll try to remember some research I did a few years ago]
In the early years of radio, Marconi set up a company which provided equipment and operators to ships. As part of this, his radio signals (including CQD) were protected as intellectual property and could only be used by his employees. By 1908 there were other companies set up in competition with Marconi, and a meeting was held between these companies to standardise radio signals, amongst these was SOS, which was chosen for it's ability to be recognisable through the noise and static. As Jess said these were radio signals and the individual letters had no meaning. I believe that the signals are meant to be sent as a singe character and not as individual letters. It might be interesting to see when the first backronym for SOS was used.
As an aside, the radio operators on the Titanic went against the rules in sending both CQD and SOS calls as this would have meant attempting to make calls to non-Marconi stations.
Great video! Etymology is endlessly fascinating.
The choke bit in artichoke is the fluff in the center that is removed before eating the heart. If you try to eat it, you could choke on it.
Yes, " to insure prompness" was what I learned too Thank you for "debunking" 🙂
FYI male butterflies will also sometimes puddle on manure to collect minerals. So there might be another reason for that particular Dutch term aside from "pooping butter".
Artemisia (aka wormwood) is an effective vermifuge used in herbal goat deworming compounds (along with slippery elm, pumpkin seed, etc...).
I believe "falconer" is the term you were searching for. A hawker is someone who verbally advertises sych as at a large open-air market or a circus sideshow.
@Butterfly. In German it is "Schmetterling". "Schmetten" is an old word of slavic origin for "cream", the word itself isn't used anymore (at least in High German, I can imagine maybe in southern Bavarian or Austrian dialects), but there is still a verb "schmettern" (~to beat, throw), which may have it's origin in beating cream to butter. It is said that people assumed that escpecially moths would beat cream to butter at night or steal it.
My “wasband” started an import company called FOB (“freight on board”) which he also had on his car’s license plate. Some people were offended because it was also used for “fresh off the boat”
Hi Rob, like your bike! & Thanks to you both for the fun.
I used to live in a flat in an old house in Southern England, possibly of the Victorian era. The toilet had a cistern high up on the wall with a long chain - the type often called a "gush and thunder". The maker's name on the cistern said "A Thomas Crapper Original".
Is Thomas Crapper an example of Nominative Determinism?
Can't imagine there were many return tickets to India sold. People who went surely had bigger plans than a few weeks hollibobs. Do something much less involved, like catch a train today, and, you'll have separate tickets for each direction, with an specific seat allocation. The obvious thing would be to look at ship's manifests & see if people were actually getting cabins on alternate sides. Acronyms are also the bread & butter of Telegrams, so wires to travel agents would be the most likely place to find p.o.s.h. in use.
I do like the Urdu explanation though. Online translators throw up "clad" as the most literal translation of "push". It's in the right territory to be a loan word, like dobi, mufti & pyjamas. It still has stronger connotations with appearance than wealth & the Romany "half" seems ill fitted to express a superlative anything.
An Urdu loan word would also be ripe for the creation of a backronym, near but not in....
The organisation I work for is one of those where words have been fiddled with until they made a decent acronym (FACES - the Family, Adult & Community Education Service). I also enjoy recursive acronyms, such as GNU (GNU's Not Unix) or MiNT (originally MiNT is Not TOS, but it became MiNT is Now TOS later when it replaced TOS). I heard the tips one on a walking history tour in London, where it stood for To Insure Prompt Service in the 17th Century Coffee Houses. Anyway, fun episode, ta!
I find these fascinating! Thank you! As a radio operator, when you mentioned CQD, this reminded me that CQ is an abbreviation for morse of “seek you”. Can you confirm otherwise? Please keep up this amazing work!!
Another fantastic and interesting podcast. Thank You!
As a British folk singer of several decades' standing, I'm always intrigued by the so-called folk process, whereby songs evolve by being misremembered by singers. One of my favourite examples is 'The Lowlands Low'. Bear with me a while! The original English version is something like 'I have a little ship in the North Countree / And the name that she has is the Golden Vanitee / As she sails upon the Lowlands low'. The song crossed the Atlantic and by the time it reached the Appalachians it had morphed into 'The Merry Golden Tree / And she sailed upon the low and lonesome sea'. Just to complicate things, in the English song she gets into a fight with 'the Spanish Galilee'!
When I was learning Morse code, I was told that C.Q. was a way to say in Morse "seek you", but could be transmitted with fewer letters, like when using lol or idk or iirc in texting.
Re: the fornication shorthand: my grandfather (and I'm rather elderly myself, so it's been a while ago) used the German word "ficken" in the sense of "to pocket". He had a "Fickenuhr" (pocket watch) which he used to put in his "Westenficke" (vest pocket). To put something into a pocket seems a rather accurate description of the act if I remember it correctly.
I find that the Backronym of Tip is usually more TIPS as To Insure Prompt Service. However it's very much a Backronym
We have "Mach' keine Fisimatenten" in German, meaning not to do something mean, nasty or unappropriate ("fies" in German means that), but actually its the time of Napoleon , when French soldiers in Germany invited German girls with "Visit ma tente" to pay them a visit in their tents, and parents didn't want their daughters to do that.
I first saw the "explanation" of the flutterby/butterfly story in a "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" strip. They also claimed in that same strip that "Intoxicated" was a Native American word meaning "Shot with a poisoned arrow". Usually, I could not believe it.
And I loved that story about Sir Douglas Bader, below.
I very much appreciated the story of Bunk and debunk. I work in Buncombe County, and this explains so much! LOL
One of my art school pals was thrilled to find a genuine Thomas Crapper toilet in his flat. He used to show it off to new aquaintances. The name was printed on the back of the lavatory bowl. Oh the joy of 1960s student digs.
I think that the threat off having your fingers cut of was relevant at the time and was reported by the King. Large groups of archers acting under their Captains would hold their hands up to show readiness or unready or other signals ( No arrows or number of arrows). The Luttrell Psalter (13C) shows a left handed archer raising his fingers in salute ( to acknowledge a good shot?).
Hey Rob, I really love this new format with Jess. It’s both entertaining and quite informative. Thank you so much for the work you’re doing! Now, you are quite right about murdering Italian words with your pronunciation 😂😂😂😂! Italian spelling rules are quite straightforward and, once you know those very few rules, there are no exceptions. You would know that “cio” is pronounced as “cho”. So, articiocco is indeed pronounced Are-Tea-Chok-Ko, and not Are-Tea-Syo-Ko.
Actually, in modern Italian, this vegetable is called carciofo (Car-Cho-Fo). But the word artichoke comes from Arabic where the vegetable is called al-Kharshuf, the beginning “al” simply being the Arabic definite article. Certainly, nothing to do with “choking”! 😂
Here in Germany we have a collection of funny bacronyms, designed to make fun of something. I bet Rob has heard of these?
For example the popular car from Volkswagen "Golf", written as VW Golf, stands for "Völlig wertloses Gefährt ohne logische Funktion" (completely worthless vehicle without logical function) or BMW stands for "Bring mehr Werkzeug" (bring more tools).
Sometimes these are just too close to the truth, as with SAP (the software) which stands for "Schlechtestes aller Programme" (crappiest of all programs).
I once had an excel sheet full of those things which could be quite long at times (Yamaha for "Yeti auf Moped am Himalaya abgestürzt" (Yeti with motorbike crashed at Himalaya)).
My favorite backronym is Bound Orderly Organized Knowledge
Ha! This podcast is just getting started and certainly promises to be a gas! (Eschatologies apart) Cheers!
At first I thought the specific falconer word you were looking for was 'harrier', because I also thought there was a more obscure word associated with it, but in hindsight I believe I was trying to remeber 'mews' which is where the birds were kept. Falconer seems to be the word.
In government there are so many acronyms that the acronym TLA, for "three-letter acronyms," was coined.
Tip : Obviously not "To Improve Performance", but two points : Is "tip" not from a custom of leaving the last of a jug or bottle of drink ("tipple") for the serving staff after a meal? Also, tips don't improve performance, nor do tips themselves get much better with better service. People gonna tip what they tip. Studies have shown better service only results in a better tip 1% of the time. The real reason for tipping is most restaurant owners are too greedy to pay wait staff properly, so you the customer have to.
In the UK the chasing game was called tig, not tag. With variations like tig on high which meant you were safe if you found something to stand on like a stone.
Tips were first given by guests to a landed estate to the regular staff of the household who served them, because serving the guests was above their household duties. The practice got extended to servers at commercial estsbl8shments, such as hotels and restaurants. "Tip" may have come from the tipper shiwing only the tip of the coin given to the servant.
I like the word 'slangwhanging' and shall endeavour to use it whenever possible. Of course, I know the word 'whanging', meaning 'throwing'. I'm not sure if it's from the West Country or up North, but I have seen, at various country shows a 'wellie whanging' competition (prize goes to the person who can throw a wellington boot the furthest). A game we played in Somerset (back in the 70's) was 'Whumping the Shnerd/Shnurd', which involved throwing a large sponge, that had been soaked in a handy bucket of water, at someone with either a baseball bat or cricket bat. Great game to play on a beach.
The letters CQ have been used from early telegraphy to the modern day - most notably with amateur radio operators - to mean "Calling all stations". Wikipedia suggests that Marconi proposed using CQD as a distress call. It was adopted in the years 1904 through 1906 but then replaced with SOS.
Posh in my OED First Edition 1909 says "dialect - The fragments produced by a smash; a soft, decayed, rotten, or pulpy mass; a state of slush. Posh-ice: Ice broken into small fragments
Recently, I'm also hearing a number of _recursive acronyms_ from America, the first I've heard was GNU, an acronym for "GNU's not Unix".
In French, tip is « pourboire », which translates as « for drinking ». You’re basically paying a drink to your waiter. I always thought that it was similar for tip, something relating a tipping a glass…
This. I associate it with the German "Trinkgeld". Drink money.
Tip is short for "tipple money" in English.
@@lohphat Danish: "drikkepenge"
@@BrennanYoung Tak! Jer er ikke sikkert om jeg vid det nok...
I'm relieved that they steered clear of 'picnic'.
The discussion of 'bunk' reminds me of 'bumf' or 'bumph'. I think this is exclusively British slang for useless paperwork. The usual derivation is that it started out in the military as 'bum fodder', i.e. paper only fit for wiping one's arse with.
I've always taken the "de" in "debunk' to mean "remove from". The idea being that one is removing the bunk to make way for more accurate information.
Also, i know many people who still use bunk to mean misinformation or lies.
I had always thought tip was from tipping your cap to receive some coins
Speaking of indecent fingers, it would be so cool (mini-claim to fame for me) if you gave a small honorable mention for my anagram of MIDDLE FINGER, which I made up whilst in high school (I think, long time ago anyway) and told you about in an e-mail. Or maybe that is really too rude on a couple of levels! Love what you guys are doing in these conversations, a true wordie's delight to put aside half an hour or so on a lazy day between work shifts.
Ha. Re the 2 finger salute. Mum told us that during WWll Churchill, who was not universally loved even then, toured the blitzed East end of London giving the V for Victory sign. My great grandmother, cockney born and bred came home laughing as 'it wasnt the V for victory the crowd was giving back'. (Theres news reel of him bring driven round).
Interesting about crapper. My great-aunt did not get indoor plumbing in her farmhouse until the early 1940s; I recall her telling us when I was a child (early 1970s) about it being called a crapper because it was named after "the man who invented it." So that myth has been around for at least 85 years; probably a lot longer. And as she had a 6th grade education (as did most of her neighbors of her generation) it definitely was not some term she might have picked up in college, or even in high school.
Fun fact: the medical APGAR score is a backronym. the system was created by Virginia Apgar and to help people remember it her name was turned into a mnemonic (Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, Respiration)
Adidas is a backronym. It's actually just part of the name of the guy who made them, Adi Dassler
A real acronym however comes from a literary reference TASER (Tom A. Swift's Electric Rifle)
LASER is also an actual acronym: Light Amplification by something something radiaton (high school has been a while for me)