Friday, January 12, 2007

Calling all wordsmiths.

I was half listening to the radio the other day when my ears pricked up as the words ‘bonkers’ and ‘phor’ came wafting across the airwaves. It turns out the Oxford English Dictionary is resorting to the British public in the hopes of receiving help in the origin of some modern day words. They have a colorful 'appeal' list of words whose origins are uncertain or unknown. The inventory of their most wanted words is classic and reminds me of the list you’d create for someone who is leaning British-English and wants to sound like a native. They include; mucky pup, tosser, prat, dogs bollocks, wally, kinky and my personal favorite, wazzock!

Now, my Queens English is a bit rusty but here goes; I had an ‘ex’ who I originally thought was the dogs bollocks, but it turned out not only was he a mucky pup but he was also a real kinky prat. Bloody hell, I was a total wally for liking him, thank God I woke up & dumped that tosser, what a wazzock!

In an efforft to redeem myself (yes-that's my traitoresque household dictionary above) I just signed up for the OED's word or the day service-todays word is 'verify'. Bloody hell-not exactly the dogs bollocks.....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pretty naff (just to add another to the list) word 'verify'. This can't be coincidence, probably a sign to have you stop with this silly word verification. :-)

Funny how slang can lead to misunderstandings between natives and visitors. When living in the U.K. a mate of mine (also Dutch) was completely shocked when he heared that somebody had had sex on our lawn (however he still had to learn that snogging is not the same as shagging).

Sharon said...

Naff....ahhh thanks for the memories :-) Funny lawn snogging incident-though I highly suspect the 'peeping tom' just got bored & moved on, thereby missing the real lawn rumpy pumpy action!

Sharon said...

Mater: Your uptake is not slow at all and he was called Steve!