BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 03:16 AM

Please, Barry. In polite society (Mudcat), please use the euphemisms "Go to Hell" or "Get lost."





(he, he, he)

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 11:30 AM

Or as the British would say..."Sod off!" or "Push off!"...both lovely expressions, I think.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Peace
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 11:42 AM

Nothin' beats Fuh Cough.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 01:52 PM

There was an old expression in my part of England (Lancashire) "as bent as a fiddlers bitch" Which used to refer to a small dog sometimes dancing for a busking fiddler; I guess it means the dog was given beer to drink and usually went nuts from constant performing. I think "bent in'th head" or "get bent" means crazy.

Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 02:04 PM

What a thread of elucidations!

I think have heard this expression on the BBC tv show, "Hustle" used as one of Q's postings said, i.e. crooked, illegal.

Never heard it growing up except someone getting bent out of shape...meaning pissed (US) off, upset, angry.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 02:27 PM

"Bent" as meaning crooked or illegal is pretty standard usage in England - applied for example to politicians, sportsmen, financiers who've been caught out engaged in cheating or stealing.

But that's a different usage from the one here, which I've never come across over here.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 02:51 PM

Dave, you are correct about bent = crazy, but it is just one of the slang meanings picked up by this word.

My son (a lawyer), says some lawyers refer to crooked clients as bent. This meaning, first appearing in print in 1914, has persisted. Originally used in the U. S. by criminals (Jackson and Hellyer, 1914, "Criminal Slang"), it has extended to England (examples from the OED), used in The Times, 1958: "I had known for years that certain members of the Brighton police Force were what we call bent." The first UK appearance was in the "Sunday Pictorial," 1948.

Of products- Brophy & Partridge, in their "Songs and Slang, 1914-1918, pub. 1930- "Bent, spoiled, ruined."

Of course the term has also been applied to homosexuals.

An old term for metal work, in which the materials are bent into shape, is "bent work" (not slang), 1858.

Also a carpentry term, a section of a framework of a framed building (1815).

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 05:16 PM

Then of course there's "bent" as meaning aptitude or skill. Not a meaning you come across all that often these days.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 05:21 PM

Yes. I have a bent for singing, playing guitar, and building model kits, for example. In other words, I lean strongly in favour of those activities.

"as the sapling is bent, so grows the tree"

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: bobad
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 07:13 PM

I always thought it was akin to "getting one's nose out of joint"

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Peace
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 07:15 PM

I'm from the sixties. One's nose should not be IN the joint.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 07:29 PM

Nor the other way around either. Ask Shane. He's an expert, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 08:16 PM

I've also run across the line in some song or other that "he was either broke or badly bent."

We didn't use this expression in the small public high school that I went to in Maine. We weren't that sophisticated. We had to make do with "fuck off!"

We did have a strange word that I never did figure out what it meant: "muff it!" There were "muffers" and it generally wasn't supposed to be good if one "muffed it."

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 09:55 PM

Charley, I remember hearing "muffed it," too, out here in the Rocky Mtn West, but when I grew up the only time I heard "muff" was in reference to a guy going "muff-diving," i.e. performing oral sex!

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 10:01 PM

To "muff it up" means to screw up, to make a mistake...pure and simple. The expression has nothing to do with sex. The word "muff", however, can refer to female pubic hair when used in a certain context. This is another of the many cases of one word being used in several different ways.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: frogprince
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 10:04 PM

Oh, Man; for the first time in my life, I just thought of the possible implications of "Muffy" as a girl's nickname.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: catspaw49
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 10:44 PM

Lead kind of a sheltered life doncha' Froggy?

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: frogprince
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 11:01 PM

Don't worry, I know what a muff is, and I don't need diving lessons. But with all the times I've heard a girl called muffy, and all those seasons of "Muffy the Vampire Slayer, I never once stopped and asked myself how the nickname could be used so much in apparent innocence.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 11:20 PM

Fer Chrissake! It was "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"! The only other Buffy I ever heard of other than Buffy Sainte-Marie...one of my alltime favorite folksingers.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: frogprince
Date: 13 Jun 06 - 11:50 PM

Alzheimers can be fun...anyhow, I have seen Muffy as a nickname enough times, though generally in a satirical context. Never actually watched the "Buffy" show, but can't believe I "muffed" the title.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 06:55 PM

I believe McGrath of Harlow was on the right track with his allusion to the phrase "get knotted". One of the meanings of the verb "to bend" is "to fasten"--for example, "The sailors bent a sail to the boom." "Sheet bend" and "carrick bend" are the names of knots. So the answer to the question "What does 'get bent' mean?" is, "It means exactly the same thing as 'get knotted'".
Next question: why "knotted"? Why not buttoned, zippered, velcroed, stapled, nailed, tied, glued, or fastened?
Perhaps someone with access to Partridge's Dictionary of Slang could look up "get bent" and "get knotted" and tell us which has the earlier citation.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: *daylia*
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 10:28 PM

Bent. Twisted. Toasted. Sloshed. Stoned. Plastered. Hammered. Smashed. Cooked. Fried. Wasted. Totalled.






















































Done.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: catspaw49
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 10:38 PM

awferchrissakes............Get Bent and got jackshit nothin' to do with Get Knotted except that both are another means of saying Get Fucked or in other words, both are slang insults. If you think there is some nautical relationship then you have a freakin' warped groove Man.

Let's all try not to make too much out of slang.......Like most of your sisters, its cheap, meaningless, and stinks in polite company.

Spaw...exiting with a classic "Dozens" line.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 10:58 PM

Yeah? Well, it doesn't stink half as bad as your Weimaraners do when they come back in the house after being outside on a wet day....

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 11:55 PM

Daylia? You forgot ripped, blasted, corked, scuppered, blotto, soused, face-down-in-the-gutter, three sheets to the wind, dismasted on a lee shore, shit-faced, and blind drunk (in Blind River).

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 11:59 PM

And...half in the bag! (that's Shane's favourite)

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Firecat
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 06:25 PM

I always thought it meant "Go away you complete moron". Must have been wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 06:38 PM

It can mean exactly that, Firecat. That's the great thing about such expressions...they are very flexible in both meaning and interpretation.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 08:54 PM

Here's a quite similar expression that is also in common usage:

"Get stuffed!"

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 09:04 PM

The OED finds 'get knotted in print from 1963 (meaning to to Hell [or worse]). It seems to be British otiginally, but is heard on this side of the water as well. Anecdotally, get bent was heard in the 1950's, but both are possibly older. If you want to be a word sleuth and examine every book, paper or bit of ephemera to find earlier uses, go to it.

Are the dates given in the dictionaries and slang compendia useful in determining when some phrase appeared? They are temporary points of reference, sunject to correction.

Charley, yes, your meaning of 'broke' for 'bent' is also correct and has been noted by the word sleuths.

Catspaw, Sie haben Recht.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 01:15 PM

I wonder if the Australian slang "crook" is related to this discussion?

There's the old bush song "Wallaby Stew" which has the chorus:

So stir the wallaby stew, make soup with the kangaroo's tail,
I'll tell you things is pretty crook since Dad got put in gaol.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 17 Jun 06 - 10:20 AM

Hah! I figured I'd stump everyone with "crook."

Where's Bob Bolton when we needs him?

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: frogprince
Date: 17 Jun 06 - 10:31 AM

Charley, you just can't expect anyone else to even hope to try to find logic in Aussie slang! : )

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: JennyO
Date: 17 Jun 06 - 11:05 AM

..unless they happen to be an Aussie, frogprince :-)

As for the word "crook", I don't think it relates to this discussion. When a thing or a situation is crook, it means it's not going well, or it's not working properly, or it's broken. If you're feeling crook, you're feeling sick. And if you are a crook, you're a criminal.

If we want to tell someone where to go, we might say get f**ked, get knotted, get stuffed, get nicked, or just f**k off, piss off, POQ or even take a long walk off a short pier.

There's a good site of colourful Aussie expressions here:

SPEAK AUSTRALIAN

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 17 Jun 06 - 11:01 PM

Thanks, gentle JennyO, for the clarification,

We just got back from a bender but that's probably different from getting crooked.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: JennyO
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 07:58 AM

So you hit the turps and tied one on, didja Charlie? Downed a few stubbies of the amber fluid and now you're full as a goog?

So tomorrow if you're feeling a bit crook, ya better have some hair of the dog and chuck a sickie - just tell your boss you're in bed with the wog. And anyone who doesn't believe that can just bugger off :-)

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 10:33 AM

;~)
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Jun 06 - 01:50 AM

Har! Har! I love it, Jenny! By Gawd, I can almost believe I'm in Oz when I read that stuff. Crocodile Dundee lives again.

Subject: RE: BS: What does 'get bent' mean...or imply?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Jun 06 - 08:22 PM

More digression- Crook (Oz) first appeared in print in the Sidney Bulletin, 1898, acc. to the OED. It was spelled krook. By WW1, it was spelled with a 'c'.