G'day Bill D, leeneia, et al,

I think greg's examples are good illustrations.

Derivations are not all that useful. I suffer from too much Latin [not much] - just enough to recognise that words go off and mean something quite different to their original Latin (... Greek ... French ... whatever ...) roots - and I can't do a thing about that.

However, the Oxford lot agree that "twee" first appears as a 'childish mispronunciation of sweet'. I think that still underpins the current usage of "twee". They are not so sure about "naff" ... but I've always suspected it's an English 'cant' variant of 'naïf'. Princess Anne's cited usage is a bit of a red herring - just an opportunistic grab for a sufficiently suggestive alternative for what the gentlemen of the press would have understood by her utterance!

BTW: GUEST,Betsy - I suspect that the Green grow the Rashes, O! sung by the American Expeditionary Force in Mexico was a far raunchier one ... probably Burns's song of that name, which you might find in The Merry Muse of Caledonia. There were a lot of displaced Scots in the low pay, easy entry jobs of America.

Regards,

Bob