DIALECT AND WORD MEANINGS

[Marilyn]

Comes from "potty" I suppose.

[Cathy]

Or maybe po could be phoa meaning 'smelly' in a different accent

[Stanley]

'reek' was a common word for a bad smell round here.....

[Cathy]

Is the correct spelling rack or wrack as in Rack your brains or Wrack your brains in trying to find an answer??
The dictionary (s) I have consulted described rack as a torture device or a framework with rails and wracking as damage, destruction or punishment.

[Tizer]

Po...possibly from French `pot de chambre' (they would pronounce pot as po).

[Stanley]

I think Tiz has the answer...
Cathy its 'rack' in my book.... in the sense of pressurising the brain into producing an answer. 'Wrack' is an archaic word that has largely fallen into disuse.

[Tripps]

I thought I might be disagreeing with that but a little research, has made me think again. I am now totally confused. We have an interesting pair of words here.

My first thought was - it's wrack - as in 'wrack your brains', and going to 'wrack and ruin'.
For me rack was a wooden frame to dry the washing on indoors, (I think SCG has one?), or an instrument of torture.

I went to the Concise Oxford (1964). Under wrack it has only - first 'In all words starting thus, the w is silent'. The only definitions it gives are wreckage, and seaweed used as fertilizer.
I think I've heard of a seaweed called bladderwrack.

I turn to rack - and everything else is there -

Stretch joints for torture. Verb.
Instrument of torture. Noun.
Shake violently - cough that racked his body
Extract maximum or excessive amount of rent.
Exhaust land by excessive use.
Horses' gait between trot and canter.
Draw off wine from the lees.
Destruction. Variation of wrack or wreck.

Looks like "the racks have it - the racks have it" unlock.

[Tizer]

I went to the Concise Oxford (1964).

Is that the best vintage?

Last night, reading my novel, I came across : "...returned from an evening in the alehouse with boon friends". I know boon to mean beneficial, helpful as in `a vacuum cleaner is a boon when cleaning the house' but that meaning doesn't fit in here, so I consulted Collins (2000 edition, the last to include names of people and places). It also had: Boon (archaic), jolly, convivial. That fits!

[Stanley]

'Boon'.... Reminded me of 'benison'.......

[Cathy]

'Your eyes are bigger than your belly'
Who hasn't heard that one as a youngster? Haha

[Stanley]

hat's a good one Cathy. And yes, my mother often said that to us.
One saying that always confused me was 'Feed a cold and starve a fever'. Did it mean that this was the treatment or that if you fed a cold you'd have to starve a fever as a consequence?

[Tizer]

I think we've discussed before how there's a strange attitude now to certain words which some people wrongly think must be rude or words that get hijacked. In both cases those people then avoid the words or try to hide them. Note the use of cockerel to try and avoid using cock. With my interest in minerals, rocks and crystals I've found another such word. There is a green coloured form of mica called fuchsite and it's often sold in those crystal healing shops. It's hilarious to hear the shop staff refer to it as `fewsite' or `foosite' or `fooksite', anything but fuchsite! We hear the worst of swearing on TV and around us in the street these days, yet at the same time we've become scared of innocent words. It's a topsy-turvy world.

[Stanley]

Do you remember when Patrick Moore was criticised for referring to 'Your Anus' when talking about the planet? Your story about Fuchsite reminds me of a story David Moore once told me about one of his headmasters when he was a young teacher. He was infamous for using bad language and modified his speech by saying 'fewking' and bewger'. David said that it was hilarious hearing staid elderly lady teachers adopting these words because they didn't recognise their origin. I think we've mentioned the substitute of Canola for rape oil. Ridiculous because the two words have entirely different roots.
Did I once hear a story about an aversion to the use of Pinus as the name for a genus of tree? (From Wikipedia.... "The modern English name pine derives from Latin pinus which some have traced to the Indo-European base *pīt- ‘resin’ (source of English pituitary. In the past (pre-19th century) they were often known as fir, from Old Norse fyrre, by way of Middle English firre. The Old Norse name is still used for pines in some modern north European languages, in Danish fyr, in Norwegian fura/fure/furu, Swedish fura/furu, Dutch vuren, and Föhre in German, but in modern English, fir is now restricted to fir (Abies) and Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga)."

[Tizer]

You might get shocked looks these days if you refer to your flu jab as `only a prick'! Or if you said you'd got a new tool. Words such as these have always had secondary, sexual, meanings but now it seems the sexual meaning is often assumed to be the primary by default.

[Stanley]

That's a good point..... Joyce Grenfell 'having a gay time'..... I wonder if engineers still use the term 'Bastard file' or thread? Probably not..... (I have documentary evidence that I am a bastard and it's never bothered me!)

[Tripps]

I always had a 'files bastard' in my army toolkit, but that mercifully was a long time ago.

A couple of Americanisms which I noticed yesterday -

R5live presenter said 'my bad' twice yesterday when he meant 'my mistake' . I've noticed this a few times recently - it's creeping in. Reminds me somehow of of Hilary Clinton and 'misspoke'.

From a public service advert on an American music station that I listen to on the interweb -

"Don't drive buzz" and "Buzz drive is drink drive"

A new one to me, but will probably cross the Atlantic soon. Relates to drugs I guess, (oh dear there's another one), since it was reported yesterday that about 50% of those tested for drugs whilst driving, with the new test kits now available, proved positive.

And finally - lots of people say 'good job' when they mean 'well done' . No harm in any of them but worth noting I'd say.

[Stanley]

Some of those were news to me David, I think I read too many old books! Language changes all the time and regardless of the dinosaurs, the arbiter is what is 'common usage'. As we get more globalised there will be more examples but it's nothing new. 'English' is a hotchpotch of borrowed words from the various cultures that have invaded us over the years. I see that 'hashtag' is now the latest word used by children. I don't really understand that but if it sticks we shall all be using it. (Whatever it is.....)

[Stanley]

Jack met a young lady who was attractive this morning and as we walked home I thought about the different words we use for the act of procreation, depending on the animal. Cows are bulled or served, Mares are covered, ewes are tupped. pigs are brimmed, deer are rutted, dogs are lined..... I'm sure there are many others I don't know but why so many?

[Stanley]

'Clutter'..... now where does that word come from.... so descriptive, it even sounds untidy!

[Stanley]

Cluttering reminded me of 'luttering'. Common in Warwickshire when I was farming there in the 1950s... Never heard it in Barlick.

[plaques]

Something that I am hearing more on the radio. The word 'Bestest' as in my bestest friend. classed as a super-superlative. (never come across this). I know its a correct German word but I would have always considered it to be slang in English. Is it me?

[Cathy]

Bested - sounds to me like one of those words used by our younger ones on social-media sites, a bit like BFG etc.

[Stanley]

I think I can remember 'bestest' from very early days but usually in the context of immature speech as a substitute for 'very best'. One thing in favour of it is that it saves a word if you are limited to 40 so yes, probably a consequence of tweeting..... That's how language evolves, what works best so I suppose we shouldn't carp too much, just uphold our own standards. (And then you start to sound old-fashioned. You can't win P!)

[Stanley]

I don't know whether P heard the report on the successful record attempt by Sir Bradley Wiggins. If he did he would no doubt have noticed the reporter saying the attempt was 'tortuous'. I suspect she meant to convey the fact it was hard and perhaps even torture.

[Tizer]

I mentioned lying on a sofa in another thread. When I was a child in East Lancs we called it a settee and I think my Lancashire grandma called it a couch. It was when I came to the south that I got the sofa word. What do you call it in Barlick nowadays? And I wonder how we got so many words for it and where they came from?