BS: translations from the British

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 07 Aug 10 - 05:40 PM

One hundred and a bit?
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: artbrooks
Date: 07 Aug 10 - 06:23 PM

Anne, eggplant, zucchini and squash are normal vegetables in the US. I expect your guests were just picky.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 07 Aug 10 - 08:26 PM

Americans always have had squash. them as don't like 'em don't know what they are missing.
Nothing better than the buttercup, with the hard green rind. Makes a good vegetable, a good soup, and even good pies, much like their relative, the pumpkin.
But I won't turn down Zucchini abd other summer squash either.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: GUEST,crazy little woman
Date: 08 Aug 10 - 12:46 AM

Way upthread there is a definition, like so -

blag: v wheedle; bluff; wangle: "I managed to blag a ride to work."

'wankle' was just a typo for 'wangle'.

Can the british wangle be related to the American winkle? Possibly. It's an interesting thought.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Aug 10 - 02:59 PM

Winkle is British, not American. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary says "chiefly British" and examples in OED give first usage in UK.
It came to U.S. from soldiers, c. WWI, but never commonly used.

Wangle is widespread throughout the English-speaking world including North America; first noted in 1820, as previously posted.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Anne Lister
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 03:05 AM

Art, I do know that squash, eggplant and zucchini are common enough veg on both sides of the Pond - it was the linguistic thing that made me feel mischievous, as we don't use any of those terms here but rather stick to the terms marrow, aubergine and courgette.

And just to confirm Q's post ... I don't think any native UK speaker is likely to confuse winkle and wangle. They carry very different meanings.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 04:36 AM

Just a short note on "knocker" in the sense of someone being a hawker, a door-to-door salesman.

Down here in Brighton (UK), a "knocker-boy" is someone who knocks on doors asking if the owner has any belongings - pottery, clocks, household objects, etc. - to sell. They usually work in pairs and are never to be trusted. They look round the house and, if they spot something of value, they tempt the owner by offering to buy something else of little value for more than its worth - praising it to the skies - then say something like, "Oh, and we could take that little thing (the valuable object) off your hands... not worth much... etc."

Not so common these days as people have got wise to most of it, but they do try it on with old people sometimes. Brighton is a local centre for the antiques trade, and knocker-boys had a very unsavoury reputation, verging on the criminal.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Penny S.
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 02:21 PM

Couple of guys from the Brighton Lanes turned up in North Kent the other year asking if I had any antiques - 1960's flat, very likely. Little did they know that I came from a Brighton family and knew of cases where people who had been burgled were advised by the police to go and look in the Lanes...
I rang the police, just in case...

I'm sure there are honest Lanes dealers, but I'm a bit over cautious.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: GUEST,%^&
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 02:37 PM

Officially, if trying to sell, they would be a "hawker" and notices on gates do read "No Hawkers", although I don't recall ever having heard the term in oral usage.


Still relatively common in speech in Ireland - and such notices still occur at, for example, race meetings.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 03:02 PM

Hawker widespread. Now rare in N. Am. because they don't come around any more. (Charities and religious canvassers abundant, but I haven't heard of 'hawker' being applied to them.

In the U. S. and Canada, many long years ago, a travelling salesman was called a 'drummer'. Was this term ever used in UK?

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 06:04 PM

The only time I've met "drummer" in that sense was in "The Runaway Train".

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 03:26 PM

Just to rewind to the concept of 'geezer' which started this thread - following the 7/7 bombings a well-dressed and articulate young man was interviewed for the TV news, as he had witnessed the destruction of a London 'bus and had seen the the body of a victim in the wreckage. His opening statement was, 'I seen this geezer in the cab'. For him, at least, no feelings of disrespect or inappropriateness - just a synonym for 'person'

Here's a slice of Sarf London life which puts 'geezer' in context, and for advanced students, introduces the concepts of 'chav', 'well fit' and 'goer'.


STREETS OF PECKHAM RYE

By Catford cop-shop wall,
I heard some geezer calling,
Leroy, they have taken you away,
For you nicked a bottle of gin, from the shop that it was in,
And now they've gone and checked your DNA.

And low lie the streets of Peckham Rye,
Where once we watched the scruffy pigeons fly,
When we went out last night, they caught you bang to rights,
And I ain't gonna be your alibi.

By that lonely cop-shop wall,
I heard a young chav calling,
Kevin, I have got to get away,
'Cos my girlfriend's got a flat, I can hide away in that,
Till it's safe to come back home to Peckham Rye.

And low lie the streets of Peckham Rye,
Where once we watched the scruffy pigeons fly,
Don't give me loads of grief, just find a decent brief,
So I can go back home to Peckham Rye.

As he walked back through Milwall,
Where kebab shops smell appalling,
Kevin thought of Leroy's girlfriend, May,
She's well fit and she's a goer,
And the more he thought it over,
He fancied seeing Leroy put away.

And low lie the streets of Peckham Rye,
Where once we watched the scruffy pigeons fly,
Now Leroy's prison bound, but Kevin's still around,
Still thieving on the streets of Peckham Rye.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 04:12 PM

'Goer' reminds me of the phrase, 'go it, Jim!' (or any name) used in the South years ago and now perhaps obsolete. It meant 'put the pedal to the metal' or equivalent (do your best!).
Not the same as 'goer' but 'go' has been a part of many slang phrases or words.

Good poem!
I presume 'brief' in the above means a lawyer.
'Chav' I don't recall seeing before.

'I seen' seems to be more common than "I saw' on both sides of the Atlantic, among the 'educationally disadvantaged'.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 06:10 PM

Geezer here just means the same as bloke. You get old geezers and young geezers, just as you get old blokes and young blokes.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 03:57 AM

Yes, 'brief' = lawyer.

'Chav' is perhaps going out of favour a bit. From the Romany word for a boy or young man, it now means a member of the benefits culture - the girls have their hair scraped tightly back so that it doesn't get in their eyes when they're pushing a baby-buggy, which they invariably are, and the boys wear football shirts which crackle slightly and emit sparks in the dark. Their sentences (verbal, not prison) end with either 'Know what I mean?', usually rendered as 'Nah mean?' or 'Innit?' and often have a rising inflection derived from Australian soap operas. UK comedians such as the 'Little Britain' team and Catherine Tate have had a lot of fun with the concept.

Not to be confused with 'chiv' which used to be a cut-throat razor used for purposes other than shaving.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 11:20 AM

More commonly gets spelt as "shiv" I think. It's also a Romani word.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 01:01 PM

"Shiv", however, was New York 1920s-30s slang for a knife ~~ you will find it in Damon Runyon.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Tangledwood
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 11:01 PM

'Chav' is perhaps going out of favour a bit. From the Romany word for a boy or young man, it now means a member of the benefits culture

So the story about chav being an acronym for "Council Housed, Anti-social, Violent" may be true as a description but not as the origin of the word?

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 03:17 AM

Most of these attempts to backform acronyms as 'origins' of words, as in above supposed derivation of 'chav', are a sort of 'folk etymology' more fanciful than reliable.   

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 12:15 PM

More fanciful than reliable - and in this case pretty despicable.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 12:46 PM

Chiv - shiv, a knife. An old word, origin unknown; originally chive.
In print 1673, A thieves or cant word; English origin, examples in OED.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 01:59 PM

Thanks for the new words and the news about Little Britain. I see that there's lot of Little Britain on YouTube.

Do you really have an underground tunnel to Peru?

MthGM, I agree with you about the backformations.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 11:48 PM

Q, that is interesting about 'chiv' going back to the 17th C (or possibly even further.) I never would have thought the word would be that old.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: RobbieWilson
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 08:17 AM

In the seventies blag used as a noun was quite common London speak for a robbery, bank job etc. I think probably popularised by tv shows such as the Sweeney ( Cockney Rhyming Slang for Flying Squad).

Geezer is one of those words with many meanings, or at least nuances, which make English the ideal language for crosswords: it can mean an unremakable person, some geezer on the bus, but by a change in tone of voice can mean someone who is a bit fly, a real man's man like Paul Whitehouse's "Tasty Geezer" in "The Fast show".

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 04:46 PM

As in "diamond geezer".

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Raedwulf
Date: 14 Aug 10 - 02:54 PM

As far as acronyms go, the vast majority of genuine ones post-date WWI. Anything that claims an older origin is almost certainly untrue. WWI military terminology made commonplace such phrases as Ack-emma, Pip-emma, Toc-H, Ack-ack, etc (all of which are from the WWI signallers phonetic alphabet).

If you see such claims as "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge", "Ship High In Transit", and so on, your best assumption is that someone is either trying to con you, or that they've been taken in by a plausible sounding story!

Blag, by the way, is in my OED, with the suggestion that the origin may be from the French blaguer "tell lies", at least in the sense of using the gift of the gab, if not in the sense of violent robbery.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 14 Aug 10 - 04:10 PM

Turning this thread around for a moment, the Spring edition of 'Guitar Aficionado' magazine carries an interview with Jeff Bridges which refers to his 'Big Lebowski' character as a 'kegler layabout'.

Now 'layabout' I understand, in fact I am one, but I've never heard 'kegler' - can a US contributor enlighten me, please?

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Aug 10 - 04:19 PM

It sounds as if it might mean someone who drinks terrible beer in large quantities...

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 14 Aug 10 - 04:25 PM

"Kegler" is a bowler, applying to tenpins at least. I don't know whether it applies to a ninepin bowler or not.

"Bowler" here is not a hat; it's not a cricket player; it's a player who rolls the big heavy ball down the "alley" to try to knock down the wooden pins at the other end.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 14 Aug 10 - 04:25 PM

Aha, McGoH, I'm that as well!

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: keberoxu
Date: 23 Jun 18 - 12:27 PM

What is a w[h]ister - clister ??

That's my revised question.
I started with the question,
what is a wisty castor?, after reading it in
"Friday's Child," one of the neo-Regency revival novels by
20th-century author Georgette Heyer.

When I looked up "wisty castor," the explanations suggested
that this latter is an adaptation of
"whister / wister - clister."

So, I am none the wiser.

I mean, I KNOW what they are speaking of , which is,
a pow in the kisser,
or a punch to the face/jaw/ear.

In the book, two gentlemen exchange words, and come to blows,
and one of them gives the other a "wisty castor."
That's plain enough.
So that isn't my question.

More deliberately put,
whence comes the phrase "whister - clister" ?

Many thanks in advance.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Iains
Date: 23 Jun 18 - 12:59 PM

a blow on the ear.

    1605 Shakespeare London Prodigal B3: If it were not vor shame, chee would a giuen thee zutch a whister poope vnder the eare. 1818 W. Scott Heart of Mid-Lothian (1883) 328: I redd thee keep hand off her, or I'se lend thee a whisterpoop. 1890–1904 Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues VII 340/1: Whister-clister (Whister-snefet, Whister-snivet, Whister-twister, or Whister-poop) […] a thumping blow; spec. a back-handed blow.

wisty-castor n. (also whisty-castor) [var. on whister-clister n.]

a punch, a blow.

    1823 Egan Grose's Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: wisty castors Heavy blows given by scientific pugilists, tending to take the fight out of each other. 1832 Egan Bk of Sports 202: Neal […] now and then put in a whisty-castor, which rather changed the look of Sam's frontispiece.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 Jun 18 - 01:35 PM

Cassell's slang dictionary says it originally meant a blow on the ear in particular - the "whisty" comes from "whisper".

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: keberoxu
Date: 23 Jun 18 - 03:46 PM

I also liked the definition which suggested
that "whister"
came from "wheesht,"
as in "hauld yer wheesht!"

So, a blow to the ear -- back-handed, in some dictionaries --
saying "hauld yer wheesht," or "shut yer yap," in non-verbal terms.

The "clister" is just there to rhyme with "whister"?
One version pointed out that "clyster" means enema -- huh??

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Senoufou
Date: 24 Jun 18 - 04:17 AM

I can't myself see the connection between a hefty blow to the head and a whisper.
The word 'wisty' has been used in Lancashire for 'large', but in relation to space. eg 'She had a wisty parlour'.

In Cockney rhyming slang, castor refers to Castor and Pollox (in other words, bollocks - testicles) If one is kicked in the castors, one is not a happy bunny.

Clyster is pronounced so as to rhyme with sheister. Clyster and clister both refer to an enema.

Subject: RE: BS: translations from the British
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 24 Jun 18 - 11:22 AM

As for "Kegler bowler", given earlier, some dictionaries online give 'kegler' as just meaning a bowler (tenpin or similar). But the Bowling Wiki kives a 'kegler' as a perfect game, 300 points, or 12 straight strikes.
So in this case, "kegler-bowler" would not be repetitive, using two words with the same meaning, but describing a bowler who is capable of (or has) managed to play a perfect game.