Etymology ain't nothin' to do with insects

[old man emu]

Yen asked, "I ask you who could believe all this codswallop?"

 

Usually when I chase up the etymology of an odd word, I am directed to the vocabulary of the Medieval Period or even way back to the pre-Roman Greeks, not forgetting the Viking and Celtic contributions to Modern English. I thought the same would apply to "codswallop", but that is not the case. It seems that the word was in use in England in the late 1950's, but etymological acceptance of an origin does not come without a written record. In the case of "codswallop", the accepted record is in a script for a 1959 episode of UK TV series Hancock's Half Hour.

 

The mythological etymology of the word relates it to a London  soft drink maker of the 1870's by the name of Codd who designed and patented a bottle designed specifically for carbonated drinks.

The bottle was designed and manufactured with thick glass to withstand internal pressure, and a chamber to enclose a marble and a rubber washer in the neck. The bottles, still in used for the Japanese soft drink Ramune and the Indian drink Banta.  They are filled upside down, and pressure of the gas in the bottle forced the marble against the washer, sealing in the carbonation. The glass ball seal was prized by children for playing the game of marbles, so intact Codd bottles in England are rare.

 

The suggestion that codswallop is a derisive term for soft drinks by beer drinkers, (from Codd’s + wallop (“beer (slang)”) “Codd’s beer (sarcastic). There is no evidence that early uses had this sense, the slang wallop (“beer”) comes later than Codd’s lifetime, and initial spellings (1963 in print) do not reflect such a derivation (*Codd’s wallop and *coddswallop with -dd- are not found), and there is an 80-year gap between proposed coinage and attestation.

[facthunter]

Might have something to do with COD Piece. (Derisory?)    Nev

Edited December 10, 2022 by facthunter

[old man emu]

While "cods" has that meaning of testicles, and codpiece is directly related to an item of clothing over the cods, it doesn't relate to "codswallop" because "codswallop" did not come into use, as said above, until the episode of "Hancock's Half Hour". The best source of the word comes from one of the writers of the show, who said that it was a word his grandfather used as a 'familiar' - a funny name used with affection for a family member. (I used to call my son "Boofhead", but now it's simply Dickhead.) 

 

However that familiar referred to a person, not a reference to nonsense as it commonly does now. Research has show that of the three examples of codswallop in "Hancock’s Half Hour", only one was spoken by Tony Hancock himself. The other two were uttered by Sid James, both times modified by ‘old’, and once occurring in “What a load of old codswallop”. Galton and Simpson, the writes of "Hancock's Half Hour" also wrote another series for Sid James and the phrase "load of old codswallop" was used in it. Hancock’s Half Hour in particular was watched and listened to by a very large proportion of the British population in the 1950s and early 1960s, so if anything could embed a word in the public consciousness, it could. 

 

How many words and phrases enter the language from TV, movies and advertising. But George has gone for a Tosca, so, anyhow have a Windfield, and if you are quick you can head him off at the pass. Etymology, you know you're soaking in it.

 

 

[old man emu]

What is the correct pronunciation of the letter "H"?

 

"H" and "W" are the only two letters of the alphabet whose names are not their sounds.  The name for "W" could be easily explained from the way it is written - two "U"s together UU. But "H" is what is called an aspirant because it is  pronounced with an accompanying forceful expulsion of air. So how do you teach children to say the names of the letters of the alphabet when the sound of one is simply the sound of unopposed escaping pressurised air? We have settled on a noise for the name of the letter, and the representation of that noise ends with the letters "aitch". The debatable question is: "Does the name start with that puff of pressurised air, or not?" Is it "haitch" or simply "aitch"? Oddly, the debate only arises in Australian English.

 

In Australia, the common line of thinking seems to be there are two ways to pronounce it—'aitch', and 'haitch'. Two armies face off across the No-Man's Land of Correctness. There is a myth that "haitch" is a marker of Irish Catholic ethnicity. To use that name for the letter marks you as some mixture of proletarian, Irish and Catholic-educated. This is to be avoided, lest you appear rude or—worse—poor. In a 1944 session of Australian Parliament, then-Senate president Gordon Brown said he had heard various members of Parliament pronounce H as 'haitch'. 'Whereas its proper pronunciation,' Brown opined, 'is aitch.' Proper is a telling word in that sentence, as the implication is that high-status members of society say "aitch", not the hoi-polloi's "haitch". At the same time, it is held that to fail to use that puff of air, "dropping your (h)aitches", is a sign of poor education.

 

One of the problems with collecting empirical evidence on issues of pronunciation is that, unlike text, spoken words are not often written down and are very hard to search for.  Lexicographers found a novel way around this information gap. They conducted a survey of the television programme Wheel of Fortune over a period of some weeks, and compared how many times contestants asked the board for 'an aitch' against the number of times contestants asked for 'an haitch'. Finding the two roughly equal, the conclusion was that Australians from a wide variety of backgrounds are haitchers these days, and that any sectarian (or class-based) split on the pronunciation is long gone. I can' give the actual date of that research project, but the show ran from 1981 to 2006, so it reflects late 20th Century Australian speech. At that time there was some evidence that the two pronunciations may have been on equal footing in Australia today, at least in the speech patterns of younger people. Those young people are now the ones teaching their children to read, which involves learning to match the sounds of letters to their shapes.

 

What we are seeing is an example of the evolution of a living language, not only through the mutation of words, but through changes in their sounds. But we must be on our guard to ensure that the pronunciation of the the last word of the Australian English alphabet is "zed".

 

[red750]

Cop that, young 'arry.

[Marty_d]

Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.

(Bruce Willis, Pulp Fiction)

[Yenn]

What about A, B, C etc. their names are not their sounds unless you subscribe to the pronunciations that the education authorities tried to install years ago.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I was taught from my favourite school, Alpha Bravo, Charlie (and no, it wasn't a flight school).

 

[willedoo]

6 hours ago, old man emu said:

"H" and "W" are the only two letters of the alphabet whose names are not their sounds.  The name for "W" could be easily explained from the way it is written - two "U"s together UU. But "H" is what is called an aspirant because it is  pronounced with an accompanying forceful expulsion of air. So how do you teach children to say the names of the letters of the alphabet when the sound of one is simply the sound of unopposed escaping pressurised air? We have settled on a noise for the name of the letter, and the representation of that noise ends with the letters "aitch". The debatable question is: "Does the name start with that puff of pressurised air, or not?" Is it "haitch" or simply "aitch"? Oddly, the debate only arises in Australian English.

We have names for the letters in our alphabet, but they are not exactly the phonetic sounds of the letters. The letter 'D' will be pronounced as 'dee', not 'duh', so we say dickhead and not deekhead. Cyrillic languages like Ukrainian and Russian use the phonetic sound as the name for their letters. So their alphabet is ah, ber, ver, ger, der, etc. (A,B,V,G,D). That's why when you see videos of the Ukrainian army liberating towns, you often hear the civilians chanting what sounds like ' za, sar, oo!', which is ZSU (Armed Forces of Ukraine).  The same thing is behind why we in the west often balls up the designation of the Russian aircraft. We tend to pronounce them in western fashion,eg: 'ess you 27' for the Sukhoi Su-27, when in reality it is 'sue 27'. MiL (me, not em eye), Ilyushin (ILL not eye el), Tupolev (too, not tea you) etc.. Apologies for the trivia: I like language.

Edited December 16, 2022 by willedoo

[facthunter]

 A gorilla in french is goreeya. .. Nev

[pmccarthy]

In Broken Hill a grill is a "wog", and a stem is a "wanker". Well established terms, but I have not heard of them elsewhere in Australia. These two words have been discussed on Broken Hill web pages, the origin is obscure, but they date back prior to WW2 at least. Despite coming from Broken Hill, I am neither a grill nor a stem. At least, I don't think so.

[old man emu]

What is this item of furniture removalist's equipment called? 

[red750]

Here's one for O.M.E.

 

[old man emu]

28 minutes ago, red750 said:

Here's one for O.M.E.

 

Whatever😉

[nomadpete]

48 minutes ago, old man emu said:

Whatever😉

Fail!

That's not a double positive or a double negative.

It might qualify as a single ambiguity though.

[onetrack]

19 hours ago, old man emu said:

What is this item of furniture removalist's equipment called? 

The name varies according to the region, I suspect - Padded blanket, Removalist blanket, Removalist padded quilt, just plain "Furniture protector".

[willedoo]

20 hours ago, old man emu said:

What is this item of furniture removalist's equipment called? 

It's a Wog. I think the term came from Wagga Rug.

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, willedoo said:

It's a Wog. I think the term came from Wagga Rug.

As a kid, I had never seen the name written down, so I thought it was a "wogga". I later learned that the correct spelling is wagga. 

 

So, what's the etymology of the name of this item? Ignore the source of the name of the New South Wales city.

 

Initially, the object first appeared around the town of Wagga Wagga in the 1890's. the 1890s was a time of drought which caused an economic depression. With a decreased demand for wool (Australia’s core industry), public works projects fell like dominoes and banks closed their doors. That same year, protests to improve working conditions became charged when the military was called in to deal with 30,000 strikers. Within three years the recession was global and had caused the total collapse of the colonial econoiesy. The economic collapse spread poverty throughout the several colonies (there as no Australia then).

 

The poor had to make do, and one thing a person waltzing Matilda needed was a blanket when sleeping rough. The wagga traditionally consisted of multiple layers of jute bags sewn together with any other available fabrics sewn in between. In order to stop the filling bunching up the outer bags were stitched in a quilting style. It is believed that they take their name from Wagga Lily flour sacks made by the Murrumbidgee Co-operative Flour Mill. The mill began operation in 1890 and the name 'wagga rug' can be traced back to the same period. At the onset of the 1930s depression, the wagga emerged as a necessity in regional Australia.

[willedoo]

When I was a young bloke, I worked for some transport companies for a while. I had to learn some new terminology. What I called some padding and pieces of timber became wogs and dunnage. The wogs were made out of that rough spun grey material that you sometimes saw as carpet underlay.

 

I wonder how difficult it would be to make a Wagga Rug with a sewing machine. An old doona cover would be the ideal vessel, and any soft, clean material as the fill. It's not the sort of thing many people would do these days as it's too easy to go to Kmart and buy a doona.

 

Doona is another relatively new word for me. When I was growing up, they were referred to as quilts. Nowdays, if you mention a quilt, people look at you like you have three heads.

Edited December 17, 2022 by willedoo

[spacesailor]

AND

One from my school-days .

If both ' see ' & ' sea ' are pronounced " C " WHAT IS THE SPELLING OF ' C ' ? .

See teacher  i did write it down .

It is the same for All those other random spellings . ( so sew sow (SEE ! )) .

spacesailor

 

Edited December 17, 2022 by spacesailor

[onetrack]

When I was young, we were just poverty-stricken dairy farmers, and couldn't afford luxuries such as multiple blankets, so I slept with just the one blanket - and for additional warmth, I had jute bags thrown over the bed (here, jute bags were most often referred to, as "hessian" bags)

[willedoo]

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

and for additional warmth, I had jute bags thrown over the bed (here, jute bags were most often referred to, as "hessian" bags)

Same in Qld.; I don't think I've ever heard anyone call them a jute bag here.

[Old Koreelah]

16 hours ago, old man emu said:

At the onset of the 1930s depression, the wagga emerged as a necessity in regional Australia.

I have fond memories of the Waggas our mum sewed for us during the drought years of the 60s. They kept her young brood warm throught several cold winters, but mysteriously disappeared when things improved. Perhaps the only time this thrifty woman tossed out anything useful; she was utterly ashamed to be poor.

[facthunter]

Made Curtains out of tie dyed hessian Only ever had ONE set of made Curtains with millieum backing in my life 'cause the pipes used to  freeze up in the wall cavities Here.. Nev

[old man emu]

I was listening on the radio to a description of a recent One Day cricket match between New Zealand and Pakistan. New Zealand were in sight of a series-clinching victory after dismissing Sarfaraz for a career-best 118 with 39 balls remaining in the match — while Pakistan also still had the chance to win themselves needing just 15 runs for victory. As dusk settled, Naseem scored 15 and Ahmed seven to guide Pakistan to 9-304 in pursuit of a 319-run target with three overs remaining and light fading.

 

The New Zealander providing the commentary described Pakistan's need to get those 15 runs put them in a disparate situation, or so I first thought. But on reflection I concluded that needing 15 runs off 18 balls was not a situation that was markedly different in every way from every other close match. A desperate situation, maybe, but not disparate. Then I realised - New Zealanders talk funny.