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| TimFox:
“Old English” is a technical term for the language before the Norman Conquest. It was followed by “Middle English” (e.g., Chaucer and Malory), “Early Modern English” (e.g., Shakespeare and the King James Bible translation), and “Modern English”. I remember a local academic making fun of a suburban high-school teacher who was proud of teaching Shakespeare in “Old English”. The academic thought that that would require a scholar like J R R Tolkien to do properly. |
| Cerebus:
Erm, it's pretty obvious from context that he was referring to a contemporary but traditional from of slang (London rhyming slang) as "Old English" not as a technically correct appellation, but as a form of humour. :palm: |
| Sal Ammoniac:
What's the etymology of Pommy Bastard? Anyone know? |
| dave j:
--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on September 27, 2021, 05:18:29 pm ---What's the etymology of Pommy Bastard? Anyone know? --- End quote --- Pommy most popularly seems to be related to rhyming immigrant with pomegranate. Bastard is just from the Aussie habit of robust language use - they have a product called Start Ya Bastard for example. From the OED: --- Quote ---Pommy (_____), n. (a.) Austral. and N.Z. colloq. Also Pommie and with lower-case initial. [Origin obscure.] A. n. A derogatory term for an immigrant from the United Kingdom; an Englishman or Englishwoman, a Briton. B. attrib. or as adj. Of or pertaining to a Pommy; British, English, spec. (often as a term of affectionate abuse) in Pommy bastard. Cf. Pom2. The most widely held derivation of this term, for which, however, there is no firm evidence, is that which connects it with pomegranate (see quots. 1923, 1963). A discussion of this and of other theories may be found in W. S. Ramson Australian English (1966) 63. 1915 in B. Gammage Broken Years (1974) 86 We call the Regulars–Indians and Australians–‘British’–but Pommies are nondescript. 1916 in Ibid. 240 They’re only a b— lot of Pommie Jackeroos and just as hopeless. 1916 Anzac Bk. 31 A Pommy can’t go wrong out there if he isn’t too lazy to work. 1920 D. O’Reilly in Murdoch & Drake-Brockman Austral. Short Stories (1951) 144 The ‘Pommy’ parson made good, as a good man always will. 1923 D. H. Lawrence Kangaroo vii. 162 Pommy is supposed to be short for pomegranate. Pomegranate, pronounced invariably pommygranate, is a near enough rhyme to immigrant, in a naturally rhyming country. Furthermore, immigrants are known in their first months, before their blood ‘thins down’, by their round and ruddy cheeks. So we are told. --- End quote --- |
| VK3DRB:
Office speak is full of silly phrases. Two come to mind: 1. Some years ago, one extremely ambitious egocentric manager at IBM would often say "Show me the metrics!" and "Let's take it offline" etc, etc. 2. A more recent one is "The takeaways from the meeting are..." In Australia, "takeaway" has the same meaning as "to go", eg: you buy a pizza in a shop and take it home to eat. A CFO I know overused this word a lot and once asked "What are today's takeaways?" to all at a meeting. I answered "A dollar's worth of chips, two dim sims and one potato cake.":-DD |
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