BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 04:26 AM

Or as the Kipper Family had it, Norfolk 'n' good...

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Senoufou
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 04:30 AM

Heh heh Steve and Rusty! Norfolk enchants!

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 05:53 AM

I've never quite understood this one:

"Bugger" means to have anal sex, which is considered by many to be an unnatural and deviant act. Yet "bugger" is not usually considered an obscene word. But "fuck" which means to have good old-fashioned, wholesome, procreational penis-in-vagina sex is considered obscene. What the buggering fuck is going on here?

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 07:18 AM

Yebbut "bugger" mean something else before the sexual meaning evolved, whereas "fuck" has more or less always meant what it means now. They're both very ancient words. And, by the way, I'm not one of the "many," as long as both partners cheerily consent to the pastime.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 08:29 AM

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the sexual meaning of "bugger" was its original meaning and has been around since about 1550. The nonsexual meanings ("bugger up" and "bugger off") have only been around since the 1920s.

bugger (n.)
"sodomite," 1550s, earlier "heretic" (mid-14c.), from Medieval Latin Bulgarus "a Bulgarian" (see Bulgaria), so called from bigoted notions of the sex lives of Eastern Orthodox Christians or of the sect of heretics that was prominent there 11c. Compare Old French bougre "Bulgarian," also "heretic; sodomite."

Softened secondary sense of "fellow, chap," is in British English "low language" [OED] from mid-19c. Meaning "something unpleasant, a nuisance" is from 1936. Related: Buggerly.

bugger (v.)
"to commit buggery with," 1590s, from bugger (n.). Meaning "ruin, spoil" is from 1923. Related: Buggered; buggering. Bugger off "go away" is from 1922, but the connection is obscure.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 10:01 AM

Then there's the embuggerance of Terry Pratchett's early-onset Alzheimer's...

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 10:43 AM

Of course you are right BWL.

Lotsa diffences buteen inglish an Muricans peach.

In the UK you go to hospital.
Here, we go to THE hospital. (Its as though we only have one hospital)

Here, hospitals with no supplies are called Holocospitals :^\

The etiology of the word hospital comes from medicinal Horse Spit. :^/
HOSPITAL. Home Of Sick People Including Treatment And Labour.

The word hospital really originates from the Latin hospes, meaning guest or stranger. It's the root of words such as hospice, hostel, hotel, and hospitality. The word patient comes from patior, which is to suffer. Hence a hospital can be interpreted etymologically as a place where strangers who suffer come to be cared for.

*In Canada they treat hosers.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Charmion
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 10:46 AM

"Embuggerance" is my favourite word for a large-scale construction project on a road that cannot be avoided. For years before we left Ottawa, every journey across town involved avoiding street closures and gigantic construction sites related to the light rail system the city started building at least three generations later than it should have. Likewise, the section of Highway 401 at Kitchener-Waterloo has been under construction since the spring of 2017, by my watch, and isn't finished yet. This matters to us because any journey that takes us east of Kitchener -- to Toronto, say, or Hamilton or even flipping Guelph -- involves the 401 for at least 20 km, and the only place to get on the damnable 401 is right in the middle of the embuggerance.

Then the provincial Ministry of Transport started a drainage project on Highway 7, the primary truck route between Kitchener and Stratford, so the big rigs are backed up three concessions and the locals are blasting through farm country to do big-city errands like going to the doctor and such.

But the current embuggerance, the one that's keeping us all at home and seething, means that we're not sitting in a traffic jam or risking our lives to slide in between two 18-wheelers doing 120 kph in the middle of a construction site == that embuggerance means that all the other embuggerances will last at least a year longer than originally planned.

Bugger.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 11:44 AM

The Australian Outback has been referred to, I have read, as GABA - the Great Australian Bugger-All.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Mr Red
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 12:23 PM

I doubt it - it's probably just their usual manner of speech. re "heck"

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell when they forget themselves and say "hell" then correct &/or apologise, I am under the impression that it is to be PC. While reeling off every spark plug, oil filter, tyre company, and fizzy sport drink (that we can read on their clothing/vehicle anyway).

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 12:39 PM

Here we simply say 'pain in the ass'.

The act of dyslexic architects keeping the 401 under constant construction, destruction and/or detours might be called antidisenablementarienbuggerism.

The 401 is able to defy most GPS systems on any given day.
I call the 401 'the foreign-one'

On the weather channel they have a show called Heavy Rescue which is about the trials, tribulations and terrific accidents on the 401.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Senoufou
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 01:44 PM

'pain in the ass' here would mean 'there is something wrong with my donkey'. We say arse (the 'r' isn't pronounced - it sounds like aaahss)

Years ago I'm ashamed to admit, I was very amused by Kevin Bloody Wilson, an Australian whose songs were the absolute epitomy of very very crude (but hilarious!) His song, 'You Can't Say C*** in Canada' is a scream. Anybody know of it? It might be on Youtube.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: meself
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 02:49 PM

I'm afraid that song wouldn't be a scream in Canada ...! Not because it is poking fun at Canada, but because most Canadians would not see the humour in it: their response would be, "Well - of course you can't say - that word - in Canada - we have SOME decency!"

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 03:26 PM

Foreign one... Good one!

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Charmion
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 04:05 PM

If only it were foreign!

But no. No such luck.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: JennieG
Date: 06 Apr 20 - 06:09 PM

Sen - Kevin Bloody Wilson is still performing, I'm sure you can enjoy him again on you tube!

His daughter is also a somedian, the apple didn't fall far frm the tree. She performs ad "Jenny Talia from Australia". You have to say it out loud.....

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Charmion's brother Andrew
Date: 09 Apr 20 - 08:48 AM

In Canada, the "r" in "arse" is more clearly pronounced the further east you go, particularly from the Ottawa Valley onward, with the exception of Montreal. On the islands of Cape Breton and Newfoundland, there is no quicker way to mark yourself as a "come from away" than to say "ass"--unless you're speaking of the beast of burden. In the rest of Canada, it's not a case of rhotic accents, it's an import of the U.S. pronunciation. I wonder if, in the case of the U.S. pronunciation, "ass" is a non-rhotic import from overseas service in two world wars; it is close to the Southern received pronunciation of "aahce."

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Senoufou
Date: 09 Apr 20 - 02:41 PM

Hello Andrew! I've visited Ottawa and Montreal, but never said, or heard said, the word 'Arse'. I was only seventeen and wouldn't have dared! One thing I did notice though was that the Canadians I met (lovely people) tended to be very cross if anyone thought their accent was 'American'. And the French speakers from Quebec that I met on a Greyhound bus heading to London Ontario (I think they were tobacco pickers, but it was a long time ago) were furious when I tried to speak French with them.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: JennieG
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 12:55 AM

Aussies also say "arse". An ass is an animal.

The longer drawn-out sound of "aahhrse" is so much more satisfying that a quickly snapped off "ass".

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: BobL
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 03:01 AM

Couldn't resist this, but it seems appropriate:

There was a young girl from Madras
Who had a most elegant ass
Not, as you might think,
Soft, rounded, and pink,
It was grey, had long ears, and ate grass.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 03:22 AM

Senoufou, were you speaking the French of Stratford-atte-Bowe, rather than Parys or Quebec?

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Senoufou
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 04:03 AM

Hee hee Sandra, I flatter myself that my French accent has always been quite good (Parys as you say!) as I used to listen to French radio stations and copied our school 'Assistante'. I'd got an AS grade in my 'A'level before the Canadian trip. But my Ontario cousin told me that the Quebecois had a distinctive accent in French, and maybe they thought I was taking the piss!

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Charmion
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 11:22 AM

Sen, if you had that experience at age 17, I think you may have encountered the first stirrings of a social-political movement called the Quiet Revolution that was all about Quebecois folks asserting themselves, their language and their culture against the remnants of colonialism, French and British alike. You also ran into our version of class-conscious reverse snobbery.

In 1969, I got a job in a charity shop sorting donations in a warehouse with a group of working-class Francophone women, none of whom had any schooling after their mid-teens. Their conversation was salty, rapid and conducted at top volume, and I learned a great deal from them -- much of it bad. To them, my Anglophone high-school French was a never-ending source of hilarity mixed with scorn.

Years later, I was in the armed forces and posted in Germany, at a little fighter base on the Rhine River. France was fifteen minutes away by car, and my friends and I frequently popped across the Rhine to shop and dine. My French was comparatively fluent, for an Anglophone with no specialized language training, so I did much of the talking. Every exchange began with the French person snickering and turning to a colleague to say the 1977 Alsatian equivalent of "Get a load a this!" I soon learned that my Ottawa Valley accent sounded to them much as the English of Gomer Pyle sounded to me.

I learned a lot of German, and by the time I left the service and returned to Canada I was fluent enough to understand the news on the radio, read the Badischer Tagblatt, and pay my electric bill at the village Rathaus without help. So it was a no-brainer to join a German choir when the opportunity presented itself. It was deja-vu all over again when my fellow choristers -- almost all immigrants from places like Berlin and Frankfurt -- heard my German, flavoured as it was by the country stylings of Baden-Wurttemberg. Along with learning to sing Bach cantatas, I got a crash course in Hochdeutsch pronunciation, kindly but unsparingly delivered by literally every native German speaker in the choir. I have never been so nagged in my life, even in recruit school.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 11:48 AM

you have lived in interesting times, Charmion

Back in the 80s a friend was an ESL teacher, teaching (Australian) English to Vietnamese Australians who had learnt their English in the French/Vietnamese school system, so naturally they couldn't understand conversational Australian English.

10 years ago I was teaching sewing at a Craft group run by a friend's church with a large Japanese congregation. Naturally these women couldn't cope with conversational English & the group offered ESL classes too.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Senoufou
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 01:28 PM

My very naughty husband has taught me a few swear words of Malinke. When he was on the phone to his family (including his venerable old mum!) he begged me to demonstrate. I was most reluctant but he insisted, so I said, "Eh boh dah! Ee air eh!" (F*** off and the same to you) There were loud shrieks of delight and much laughter from the other end, and I was made to repeat it again and again as different family members came on the phone to enjoy it. I was like a performing circus animal!
When I was teaching,I took no end of pupils 40 at a time (12 yr olds) on week-long visits to France. We stayed in Etretat in Normandy. In the evenings my co-helpers and I would sit in the café and were served by some rather stand-offish people. But I couldn't resist letting loose in fluent French to them and they were amazed. But they expressed their appreciation by bringing me a huge bowl of blooming snails. Yuk!

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 01:57 PM

I ba boda baa!

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 01:57 PM

I fa fro bassa!

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 02:01 PM

Sen you are a silver tongued devil.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Senoufou
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 02:40 PM

Pwaaaagh haaaagh haaaagh Mrrzy!!! "Your mum's fat bum!" "Your dad's huge willy!" Husband is laughing fit to burst!

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Charmion's brother Andrew
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 05:00 PM

Sen, two factors may explain why your experience of vulgar usage in Ottawa and Montreal is different from mine: you may have not been with vulgar sorts that I worked with in the Primary Reserve of the Canadian Forces and, in the case of Ottawa, it has a fair few CFAs, as it is a company town that draws from other regions.

Indeed, the Wikipedia article on Ottawa Valley English remarks on the loss of the accent in the city and environs.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 05:20 PM

Senoufou, c'était pour lui.

I was taught your mom has a fat assHOLE, implying an affinity for anal sex, and Your dad has the dick of a lizard, implying tiny.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
From: Senoufou
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 05:35 PM

Ah Andrew, that's probably the explanation. I stayed with my aunt & uncle in London Ontario after flying to Montreal and visiting Toronto & Ottawa. The people I met were just fellow-travellers and random folk.
Have to add that I found the Canadians extremely friendly and kind. Several invited me to stay for a day or two in their holiday cabins on the shores of the Great Lakes, and I can say I've swum in every one!

Mrrzy, I've just put your translation to my husband and he says you're quite right, but he didn't want to tell me all the gory details!

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 08:24 PM

Now I laugh.

Senoufou une fois les histoires finies je viens vous rendre visite.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 Apr 20 - 09:46 PM

I used to get the biggest kick out of it when my formerly-Baptist mother-in-law said "Gosh all hemlock." It became a family joke. And when we'd laugh, she'd laugh. She was lovely.

And my favorite nun, a very innocent soul who's almost 80 and sometimes seems like a little girl, feels very daring when she says, "Jeesum Cripes!"

Up above, Doug Chadwick calls them "minced oaths," a great term. I think they can be very funny, and I think a lot of them are meant humorously. Some are almost an art form.

I used to say, "For-get you!" My camp song partner Joe McCarthy (same name, same family) worked for Teddy Kennedy. One time, Teddy heard him say it, and Teddy said, "Hey, I like that!"

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: meself
Date: 11 Apr 20 - 12:07 AM

Just for the heck of - whoops! I mean HELL of it - talk of the Ottawa Valley reminded me of the singer-songwriter Mac Beatty: The Banks of the Ottawa

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Apr 20 - 05:32 AM

Whale oil beef hooked...

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Apr 20 - 09:32 AM

Senator says something. Other character (reporter?) says, the senator's wrong. Senator's aide says, quietly, The polite way to disagree with the senator is That turns out not to be the case. Reporter's face lights up, Hey, I like that! Anyway, the senator's wrong.
Joe reminded me of that scene from Lucifer's Hammer.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: CupOfTea
Date: 13 Apr 20 - 03:26 PM

I grew up in a house where the use of obscenities was considered evidence of a meagre vocabulary. "Bitch" was a female dog, no euphamizing it, "bastard" was a kind of a file. I appreciated the finesse of a well put together insult, particularly if it went over the head of it's target.

As a schoolkid, learning the forbidden words, and exploring useful euphamisms, things like "H E double hockey sticks" had no lasting appeal, but were a transition to having the gumption to use using the actual words. I don't know exactly how I got to the point of using what I do now, but it definitely gets modified by where I am. I agree with meself's comments above about "gosh" and "darn." I know using "good grief!" comes from exposure to Peanuts, but I don't think "good God!" was ever part of my repertoire. Sometimes using a colorful euphamism is a trick of rhetoric to emphasize an artificiality. In recent years, I see the use of obscenities as a way to emphasize the vehemence of my comments. Exposure to the gleefully obscene approach to insults from Scotland has been a bit of inspiration.

I am much more foulmouthed in person than online/in print. Part of that is choosing words more carefully when taking the time to write. I confess to using "fuck" as an exclaimation of frustration often. "Ohforfucksake" I do not tend to use it in print. No, my IPhone and iPad do that for me, much to my disgust & I must carefully proofread. Fun though it might be, I do NOT go to "fuck festivals."

Joanne in Cleveland

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Apr 20 - 06:39 PM

"He's puttin down hay where the goats can't get it."

he’s stuck up higher than a light-pole.
he has his nose so high in the air he could drown in a rainstorm.
He thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow.
You're lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut.
He's slicker'n owl sh*t.
She’s meaner than a wet panther.
He's a snake in the grass.
Why, that egg-suckin' dawg!
Worthless as gum on a boot heel!
Even a dog knows when its kicked on purpose.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 13 Apr 20 - 07:15 PM

.................
He's slicker'n owl sh*t.
..................


Why did you feel unable to write the full word "shit", Donuel? This seems to sum up the absurdity referred to in the opening post.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 13 Apr 20 - 08:30 PM

Australians were once very good at nicknames & insults, but 4-letter words took over.

speaking of well put together insults ...

in yesterday's sort out (a small part of a gi-normous ongoing & often unmoving clean up) I found a scrap of paper where I'd scribbled these classics, dunno when I noted them or where they came from.

drunk? drunk? he was as full as two race trains.

under the bar with the rest of the dead spirits

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Apr 20 - 09:24 PM

I prefer to compromise, Doug. To me, it's sh*it.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Apr 20 - 10:02 PM

Once in a blue moon Steve makes me laugh.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: meself
Date: 13 Apr 20 - 11:06 PM

In the recently-revived thread on Ned Kelly, there is some discussion about whether the word "adjectival" was ever actually used in Australia as an adjectival euphemism, or whether that was dreamed up by a novelist. Several Australians said they'd never heard of it; one, however, said it was a favourite euphemism of her grandmother. Make of that what you will - you adjectival nouns, you!!

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Apr 20 - 12:40 AM

Verb you!

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Mr Red
Date: 14 Apr 20 - 06:15 AM

NZ Graffiti (c 1987)

When the Atom Drums Bop Whale oil beef hooked...

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Apr 20 - 07:04 AM

obscurist but OK.

No knee to mist a sing gull Mormon of D agro-sizing hollow cross.

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Apr 20 - 08:40 AM

Are you guys doing wants pawn term?

And of Tom Lehrer at that. I am musically impressed.

Next will be mots d'heure, gousses, rames, and the inevitable result of child marriage.

Things I learned when my sister emigrated to Tas include I'll have his balls for a bowtie (improving on guts for garters).

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Apr 20 - 08:53 AM

"Will the owner of the Ford that is blocking everyone in the driveway please go to Helena Handbasket. Again go to Helena Handbasket"

Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
From: EBarnacle
Date: 14 Apr 20 - 02:14 PM

100

Once, when I was working in my state correctional system, I was told, after writing "buggered" in a report, that the preferred term was "sodomized."

As anyone who know his or her ropes can tell you, the declivity between strands of laid roper is called the "contline." Having checked the history of the term, the original was "cuntline" because of similarity to the resemblance to labia. Presumably, an earlier Dr. Bowdler persuaded user to change it out of deference to the ladies.

My preferred euphemism for Hell is Hades--different word, same meaning.
When sufficiently ired, I sometimes say "sugar, brown sugar" for "shit."

If I am dealing with sensitive types, in place of [your choice of curse word or invective here], I have been known to say "maledictions."