#26 June 24th, 2005 07:09 AM

mzungu

Member

Re: All you self-indulgent people

"Bashing The Bishop" is an old favourite in the UK

Hmm, Bishop because of the red helmet??
(I make the leap because I once heard the "monkey" referred to as the "purple-helmeted soldier" )

I too am intrigued by word origins- as I understand it, many of the English "4-letter words" are of Saxon origin, and considered profane or foul because they were from the subjugated peoples?  any better ideas on that one??

As I was catching up on all the posts so far, I thought I might have one, but someone else remembered "tossing off" - I only ever ran across that one in "The Thin Red Line" a WWII story by James Jones- read long ago, I had to ponder a bit, thinking, "would he really put that in a book?"   ah, how times have changed-

thylacine

Member

Re: All you self-indulgent people

I too am intrigued by word origins- as I understand it, many of the English "4-letter words" are of Saxon origin, and considered profane or foul because they were from the subjugated peoples?  any better ideas on that one??

I'd always assumed that most of the "four letter words" were Anglo-Saxon too, but apparently that's not so. "Shit" is I think originally of Scandinavian origin. But most of the other "four letter words", such as "fuck", are actually Flemish and were brought to England by Flemish sailors and merchants.

Interestingly as the English language developed and changed after the Norman Conquest it reflected the master/servant relationship between the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons.  So that now in modern English most of the words relating to farming and animals come from the Old English. And everything related to what is on the dinner plate comes from the Norman French, eg pig from Old English, pork from Norman French!

wantingscott

Member

Re: All you self-indulgent people

in common usage now in ny is "skeet shooting"

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