nitty-gritty
david56
"nitty-gritty". To me, this has a figurative meaning (the essence or
basic part of something) but I have no memory of ever hearing any
derivation.
A government minster was addressing the Police Federation (a sort of
trade union) and said it was "time to get down to the nitty-gritty" when
talking about police training. He was barracked for using racist
language - Plod is apparently banned from the phrase.
I had no idea why. My wife said she'd heard that the term referred to
slave traders' black mistresses. All sorts of derivations have now been
trotted out but no apparently no evidence can be found for the phrase
existing any earlier than 1963 - this "proves" to the PC (Politically
Correct, not Police Constable) lobby that they are correct in banning
the phrase as there's no evidence that it's not racist in origin. Gulp.
I've also heard it suggested today that it refers to the bottom of the
slave ship where grit would accumulate, but really, this is getting a
bit thin.
Can we help the BBC with a documented derivation?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_1988000/1988681.stm
--
David
I say what it occurs to me to say.
The address is valid today, but I will change it to keep ahead of the
spammers.
Donna Richoux
I remember this being discussed a few years ago, when the UK's national
police association (whatever it's called) put it into its handbook of
cultural awareness, political correctness, etc. I rather doubt that any
illuminating evidence about the phrase's true origin has surfaced in
those few years. You could check the Google Groups for clues.
I'm sure you can find reputable word-origin people saying that the
origin of the phrase is unknown. The origin of most slang words and
phrases *is* unknown. But that doesn't mollify those who believe what
they've been told, about this meaning something or other disgusting, I
forget what exactly. (If the various repellent theories are not all the
same, that would argue against them, actually.)
Once these blacklisting snowballs get rolling, it's nearly hopeless to
stop them. If enough people *believe* a word has unpleasant origins, it
becomes just as tainted as if it actually had them. I'm reluctant to
mention "squaw," because I don't want to start a big discussion, but
it's being removed from placenames for similar, debatable reasons.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Harvey V
wrote:
> There is a minor skirmish underway in the UK today relating to
> "nitty-gritty". To me, this has a figurative meaning (the essence
> or basic part of something) but I have no memory of ever hearing
> any derivation.
>
-snip-
> Can we help the BBC with a documented derivation?
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_1988000/1988681
> .stm
>
What is clear from the first OED citation -- from _Time_ in 1963 -- is
that it comes from black usage rather than white. What the source is,
though, I have no idea. (I don't recall, offhand, ever hearing even a
folk etymology for it.)
--
Cheers,
Harvey
david56
>
> david56 <bass.a...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> I remember this being discussed a few years ago, when the UK's national
> police association (whatever it's called) put it into its handbook of
> cultural awareness, political correctness, etc. I rather doubt that any
> illuminating evidence about the phrase's true origin has surfaced in
> those few years. You could check the Google Groups for clues.
You're right Donna - January 2000. I kept getting (related?) hits for
the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and some sort of LP cleaner.
Robert Lipton
> david56 <bass.a...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>
>>There is a minor skirmish underway in the UK today relating to
>>"nitty-gritty". To me, this has a figurative meaning (the essence or
>>basic part of something) but I have no memory of ever hearing any
>>derivation.
>>
>>A government minster was addressing the Police Federation (a sort of
>>trade union) and said it was "time to get down to the nitty-gritty" when
>>talking about police training. He was barracked for using racist
>>language - Plod is apparently banned from the phrase.
>>
>>I had no idea why. My wife said she'd heard that the term referred to
>>slave traders' black mistresses. All sorts of derivations have now been
>>trotted out but no apparently no evidence can be found for the phrase
>>existing any earlier than 1963 - this "proves" to the PC (Politically
>>Correct, not Police Constable) lobby that they are correct in banning
>>the phrase as there's no evidence that it's not racist in origin. Gulp.
>>
>>I've also heard it suggested today that it refers to the bottom of the
>>slave ship where grit would accumulate, but really, this is getting a
>>bit thin.
>>
>>Can we help the BBC with a documented derivation?
>>http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_1988000/1988681.stm
Partridge has a fairly long entry, which I will reproduce in full, bad
typing permitting. My emendations are in square brackets.
nitty-gritty, the 'the very core of something, the fundamental truth
about it' (Julian Holland, 1968); adopted, 1967, ex US, where current at
least as early as 1963. Others in phrase '(Let's) get down to the
nitty-gritty'. W&F 1975 [Wentworth & Flexner _Dictionary of American
Slang_ 2nd Ed], define it as 'the ... essentials of any situation,
predicament, etc. esp. the hard unvarnished facts, ... or harsh
realities'. [there follow several cittions of its uses, then] Julian
Holland, in his letter, adds, 'The thing that fascinates me about the
xpression is that is it one of the few pieces of _original_ pop music
slang ("grotty" is another) and is not...derived from the scene'. W&F
state that, in the US, it was orig. Negro use.
DARE has no entry. RHUD2 gives the date as 1960-1965 and calls it
"rhyming slang". My pocket AHD says "origin uncertain."
It looks like it refers to cleaning things thoroughly, down to the nits
and grit, instead of a perfunctory washing.
Bob
CyberCypher
news:3CE26F32...@ntlworld.com:
The article's last paragraph just demonstrates the stupidity of PC:
"banned because it [*]is thought to originate from[*]". But nobody
knows, so we'd better not say it. What utter PC stupidity!
Here is what W3NID says:
Main Entry:nitty*gritty
Function:noun
Etymology:origin unknown
: what is essential or basic : specific practical details *getting
down to the nitty-gritty*
nitty*gritty adjective
Since 1965, there has been a music group called the Nitty Gritty Dirt
Band in the US, and it's still alive and well on the Web:
There has never to my knowledge been any complaint from any corner
about the name of the band, and if it were racist, they would've heard
about it by now, 37 years later.
Here is what OED2CD-ROM says, and as you can see, it is used by
respectable and reputable African American persons and publications:
nitty-gritty (___________). slang (orig. U.S.).
[Etym. unknown.]
The realities or basic facts of a problem, situation, subject, etc.;
the heart of the matter. Also attrib. or as adj.
1963 Time 2 Aug. 14/2 The Negroes present would know perfectly well
that the nitty-gritty of a situation is the essentials of it.
1963 Wall St. Jrnl. 12 Sept. 14/1 Says W. C. Patton, field secretary
for..the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
‘Now we’re down to the nitty-gritty, the hard core who’ve never been
interested in politics.’
1967 Freedomways vii. 186 All those ‘nitty gritty’ actions and styles
which set Negroes off from the rest of American society.
1967 N.Y. Times 27 June 20 He’s not afraid to get down to the nitty-
gritty of unpleasant problems.
1968 Times 15 Nov. 17/2 To get down to what the American will call the
‘nitty-gritty’ of the matter--the heart, sir, the heart.
1969 Listener 25 Sept. 420/2 The Animals were already into the nitty-
gritty of blues history.
1973 Computers & Humanities VII. 163 Most of the Harris work covers the
nitty-gritty problems of subject analysis.
1974 Financial Times 6 Mar. 36/2 Mr Wilson is expected to appoint a
trade union MP or two as junior Ministers at the Department of
Employment to make up for Mr Foot’s lack of experience in the ‘nitty-
gritty’ of trade union negotiations.
1975 Publishers Weekly 13 Jan. 56/3 He still can startle the reader
with his abrupt shifts from nitty-gritty reality to far-out fantasy.
--
Franke
Grammar 1: Internalized rules for the spoken language.
Grammar 2: Formal rules for the written language.
Grammar 1 does not equal Grammar 2.
Tom Traubert
<bass.a...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
M. Quinion's World Wide Words contains, at
<http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-nit2.htm>,
some evidence that the phrase dates to 1956 or earlier. An
African-American origin is indicated.
--
Tom
Joona I Palaste
on alt.usage.english:
The governments seem to be focusing too much on what people *should be*
offended about, and not enough on what people *are* offended about.
Come on, show me an African-American or an African-British who had even
the slighest problem with the word "nitty-gritty" in the last 30 years,
before this news (cited above) came into knowledge. I dare you.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"How come even in my fantasies everyone is a jerk?"
- Daria Morgendorfer
Emery
----------
In article <abu5dc$h42$2...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>, Joona I
Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>david56 <bass.a...@ntlworld.com> scribbled the following
>on alt.usage.english:
>> There is a minor skirmish underway in the UK today relating to
>> "nitty-gritty". To me, this has a figurative meaning (the essence or
>> basic part of something) but I have no memory of ever hearing any
>> derivation.
>
>> A government minster was addressing the Police Federation (a sort of
>> trade union) and said it was "time to get down to the
nitty-gritty" when
>> talking about police training. He was barracked for using racist
>> language - Plod is apparently banned from the phrase.snip
>
>The governments seem to be focusing too much on what people *should be*
>offended about, and not enough on what people *are* offended about.
>Come on, show me an African-American or an African-British who had even
>the slighest problem with the word "nitty-gritty" in the last 30 years,
>before this news (cited above) came into knowledge. I dare you.
>
I think that, at least in the US, the government concerns itself
in such matters only after a significant uproar has occurred over
the term.
One such silly rumor that seems to have been nipped in the bud is
the supposed racist origin of "picnic". Here's a quote, from a
debunker's site <http://www.word-detective.com/110598.html>:
I do not know who the author of the following paragraph is,
and I quote it only for illustrative
purposes, omitting the infamous "n word"as indicated:
"In my lectures I ask people if they understand
where the word 'picnic' comes from. It
was typical to have a picnic on a Friday evening
in Oklahoma. The word was short for
'pick a [n word]' to lynch. They would lynch a
Black male .... That's where the term
really came from."
This horrifying story is, as I'm sure you suspect, not even
remotely true. "Picnic" first
appeared in English in 1748, apparently borrowed directly
from the French "piquenique," which
combined "piquer" (pick) with the obsolete French word
"nique" (trifle).
The nonsense resulted in some attempt to ban the word "picnic".
This appeared in the Sacramento News & Review's "Capital Bites"
column <http://209.63.142.214/issues/sacto/2001-10-11/bites.asp>:
Actually, it doesn¹t take much prodding to get Bites¹ dander
up over the logical gymnastics
that many so-called liberals employ in the name of political
correctness. So step on forward,
Michael Harris, and take your medicine.
Harris is heading up an effort to change the name of Old
Sacramento¹s Picnic Park, calling it
racist and highly offensive to African-Americans like
himself. Utterly baffled by the charge,
Bites had a minion investigate the matter and discovered that
some Southerners have used
the word ³picnic² to describe not just an outdoor meal, but
apparently one in which lynching
a black person was part of the program.
Go to <http://www.snopes2.com/> and search for "picnic racist"
for further idiocies associated with this.
Tony Cooper
news:abukaf$labed$1...@ID-93256.news.dfncis.de...
I do not know who the author of the following paragraph
is,
and I quote it only for illustrative
purposes, omitting the infamous "n word"as indicated:
"In my lectures I ask people if they
understand
where the word 'picnic' comes from. It
was typical to have a picnic on a Friday
evening
in Oklahoma. The word was short for
'pick a [n word]' to lynch. They would lynch
a
Black male .... That's where the term
really came from."
I've seen this brought up in another newsgroup -
soc.culture.irish - by Greig Carlin (aka: Humanitas, and
others) In Greig's version, the term came from
"picaninny"...a word for a black child, but Greig included
the lynching part. I've also heard claims that
"pickaninny" means select any of them, and they are dumb as
ninnies. The less gullible think it comes from pequenino,
Portugese for small.
Why do you omit "nigger"? It is certainly offensive, but
anyone reading this automatically knows what you mean. If
you know the word is "nigger", and the reader knows the word
is "nigger", is writing "[n word]" somehow less offensive?
Is a black person somehow less insulted by being called an
[n word]?
--
Tony Cooper aka: Tony_Co...@Yahoo.com
Provider of Jots & Tittles
Emery
----------
In article <aburbo$lbp0p$1...@ID-113505.news.dfncis.de>, "Tony
Cooper" <tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>"Emery" <n...@this.org> wrote in message
>news:abukaf$labed$1...@ID-93256.news.dfncis.de...
> I do not know who the author of the following paragraph
>is,
>and I quote it only for illustrative
> purposes, omitting the infamous "n word"as indicated:
>
> "In my lectures I ask people if they
>understand
>where the word 'picnic' comes from. It
> was typical to have a picnic on a Friday
>evening
>in Oklahoma. The word was short for
> 'pick a [n word]' to lynch. They would lynch
>a
>Black male .... That's where the term
> really came from."
>
...
>
>Why do you omit "nigger"? It is certainly offensive, but
>anyone reading this automatically knows what you mean. If
>you know the word is "nigger", and the reader knows the word
>is "nigger", is writing "[n word]" somehow less offensive?
>Is a black person somehow less insulted by being called an
>[n word]?
>
I was quoting someone else who omitted it from their quotation of
someone else who said it.
CyberCypher
news:aburbo$lbp0p$1...@ID-113505.news.dfncis.de:
> "Emery" <n...@this.org> wrote in message
> news:abukaf$labed$1...@ID-93256.news.dfncis.de...
> 'pick a [n word]' to lynch. They would lynch
[...]
> Why do you omit "nigger"? It is certainly offensive, but
> anyone reading this automatically knows what you mean. If
> you know the word is "nigger", and the reader knows the word
> is "nigger", is writing "[n word]" somehow less offensive?
> Is a black person somehow less insulted by being called an
> [n word]?
Based on my experience, I'd say that this is true. It isn't what's in
your heart and mind but what comes out of your mouth that is offensive,
saith the PC police. If "nigger" is offensive, then replace it with
something that isn't offensive, like "the 'N'-word", and somehow it's
all better. Isn't that what euphemism is all about? The only person
I've ever known who didn't buy euphemism was my high school principal.
He wouldn't let a group of us say "What the heck" in something we had
planned to broadcast over the PA system. His reasoning was simple.
"What is 'heck'? A euphemism for 'Hell'. Are you allowed to say 'What
the Hell' over the PA system? No. Therefore, you may not say 'What the
heck' over the PA system because it means 'What the Hell'."
This reminds me of the joke I heard from a few black people I knew in
Atlanta in the 60s, which I cleaned up for use in a sensitivity session
for Deep South mentalities. "Q: What do you say to the African American
PhD your company has hired to working in the R & D Department?" "A:
Well, Mr Washington, I see that you have a PhD in nuclear physics. I
guess that means I won't have to teach you how to use this broom".
Eric Walker
>"Emery" <n...@this.org> wrote in message
>news:abukaf$labed$1...@ID-93256.news.dfncis.de...
>
> I do not know who the author of the following paragraph
>is, and I quote it only for illustrative purposes, omitting
>the infamous "n word"as indicated:
>
> "In my lectures I ask people if they
>understand where the word 'picnic' comes from. It was typical
>to have a picnic on a Friday evening in Oklahoma. The word
>was short for 'pick a [n word]' to lynch. They would lynch
>a Black male .... That's where the term really came from."
>
>
>I've seen this brought up in another newsgroup -
>soc.culture.irish - by Greig Carlin (aka: Humanitas, and
>others) In Greig's version, the term came from
>"picaninny"...a word for a black child, but Greig included
>the lynching part. I've also heard claims that "pickaninny"
>means select any of them, and they are dumb as ninnies. The
>less gullible think it comes from pequenino, Portugese for
>small.
Where _does_ such stuff originate?
The OED, as usual, dispels the smoke:
Also pique-nique, pick-nick, pic nic. [Occurs (in references
to foreign countries) from 1748, but apparently not before
circa 1800 as an English institution . . . .
There are notes referencing the term's being "of recent
introduction" into French by 1691, and in use in Germany in
1748 and Sweden in 1788.
Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer read?
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker
Webmaster, http://owlcroft.com/english/
Steve Hayes
>There is a minor skirmish underway in the UK today relating to
>"nitty-gritty". To me, this has a figurative meaning (the essence or
>basic part of something) but I have no memory of ever hearing any
>derivation.
>
>A government minster was addressing the Police Federation (a sort of
>trade union) and said it was "time to get down to the nitty-gritty" when
>talking about police training. He was barracked for using racist
>language - Plod is apparently banned from the phrase.
That sounds like the urban legend that circulated a few years ago about "rule
of thumb", where some people, using false etymology, claimed that it was
sexist.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/steve.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Joona I Palaste
on alt.usage.english:
> On Wed, 15 May 2002 15:22:42 +0100, david56 <bass.a...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>There is a minor skirmish underway in the UK today relating to
>>"nitty-gritty". To me, this has a figurative meaning (the essence or
>>basic part of something) but I have no memory of ever hearing any
>>derivation.
>>
>>A government minster was addressing the Police Federation (a sort of
>>trade union) and said it was "time to get down to the nitty-gritty" when
>>talking about police training. He was barracked for using racist
>>language - Plod is apparently banned from the phrase.
> That sounds like the urban legend that circulated a few years ago about "rule
> of thumb", where some people, using false etymology, claimed that it was
> sexist.
Hey, if there are two mutually contradicting etymologies for a word or
a phrase, people always notice and remember the one which is more
sexist, more racist, or generally more offensive to minorities.
(Since when did women became a minority, though?)
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"No, Maggie, not Aztec, Olmec! Ol-mec!"
- Lisa Simpson
Tony Cooper
You said you omitted the infamous "n word". That would lead
me to believe that the original writer wrote "nigger" and
you omitted it. The brackets suggest this also. It's very
clear that you had no intention to be offensive, but the
substitution seems to me to be a futile and weak gesture.
david56
>
> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer read?
Non UK readers may not have heard about the undereducated nutters, a
couple of years ago, who trashed a doctor's home in South Wales because
her profession was given as "Paediatrician".
Eric Walker
>Eric Walker wrote:
>>
>> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer read?
>
>Non UK readers may not have heard about the undereducated
>nutters, a couple of years ago, who trashed a doctor's home in
>South Wales because her profession was given as
>"Paediatrician".
No, that one made it over here. Kinda makes ya proud to be
human, proud, an' . . . an' a little bit humble.
david56
>
> On Thu, 16 May 2002 09:08:31 +0100, david56 wrote:
>
> >Eric Walker wrote:
> >>
> >> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer read?
> >
> >Non UK readers may not have heard about the undereducated
> >nutters, a couple of years ago, who trashed a doctor's home in
> >South Wales because her profession was given as
> >"Paediatrician".
>
> No, that one made it over here. Kinda makes ya proud to be
> human, proud, an' . . . an' a little bit humble.
What astonished me was not the misunderstanding (simple ignorance can be
excused), but the belief that a child molester would announce the fact
on her business card.
Joona I Palaste
>>
>> On Thu, 16 May 2002 09:08:31 +0100, david56 wrote:
>>
>> >Eric Walker wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer read?
>> >
>> >Non UK readers may not have heard about the undereducated
>> >nutters, a couple of years ago, who trashed a doctor's home in
>> >South Wales because her profession was given as
>> >"Paediatrician".
>>
>> No, that one made it over here. Kinda makes ya proud to be
>> human, proud, an' . . . an' a little bit humble.
> What astonished me was not the misunderstanding (simple ignorance can be
> excused), but the belief that a child molester would announce the fact
> on her business card.
That's precisely what astounded me as well. Surely the lynch mob would
have thought at some point "Hey, isn't it weird that this guy publically
admits to being a child molester?".
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"'It can be easily shown that' means 'I saw a proof of this once (which I didn't
understand) which I can no longer remember'."
- A maths teacher
Eric Walker
>david56 <bass.a...@ntlworld.com> scribbled the following
>on alt.usage.english:
>
>> Eric Walker wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 16 May 2002 09:08:31 +0100, david56 wrote:
>>>
>>> >Eric Walker wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer
>>> >> read?
>>> >
>>> >Non UK readers may not have heard about the undereducated
>>> >nutters, a couple of years ago, who trashed a doctor's
>>> >home in South Wales because her profession was given as
>>> >"Paediatrician".
>>>
>>> No, that one made it over here. Kinda makes ya proud to be
>>> human, proud, an' . . . an' a little bit humble.
>
>> What astonished me was not the misunderstanding (simple
>> ignorance can be excused), but the belief that a child
>> molester would announce the fact on her business card.
>
>That's precisely what astounded me as well. Surely the lynch
>mob would have thought at some point "Hey, isn't it weird that
>this guy publically admits to being a child molester?".
Correct me if my memory has failed me here, but was not the mob
excited by a reference to the doctor in a newspaper? Something
like "so-and-so, a paediatrician, has opened offices at ---"?
Joona I Palaste
on alt.usage.english:
> On 16 May 2002 08:30:25 GMT, Joona I Palaste wrote:
>>david56 <bass.a...@ntlworld.com> scribbled the following
>>on alt.usage.english:
>>
>>> Eric Walker wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 16 May 2002 09:08:31 +0100, david56 wrote:
>>>>
>>>> >Eric Walker wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer
>>>> >> read?
>>>> >
>>>> >Non UK readers may not have heard about the undereducated
>>>> >nutters, a couple of years ago, who trashed a doctor's
>>>> >home in South Wales because her profession was given as
>>>> >"Paediatrician".
>>>>
>>>> No, that one made it over here. Kinda makes ya proud to be
>>>> human, proud, an' . . . an' a little bit humble.
>>
>>> What astonished me was not the misunderstanding (simple
>>> ignorance can be excused), but the belief that a child
>>> molester would announce the fact on her business card.
>>
>>That's precisely what astounded me as well. Surely the lynch
>>mob would have thought at some point "Hey, isn't it weird that
>>this guy publically admits to being a child molester?".
> Correct me if my memory has failed me here, but was not the mob
> excited by a reference to the doctor in a newspaper? Something
> like "so-and-so, a paediatrician, has opened offices at ---"?
Even then the mob should have shown a modicum of common sense.
Newspapers do not report doctors they know to be child molesters opening
up shop in normal news articles. They run large headlines on the front
pages saying "Dr So-and-so, a paedophile, has opened offices in our
sweet, innocent city! Is no one safe any more? Join us at page 1 for a
heated discussion..."
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
Phil C.
"david56" <bass.a...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:3CE368FF...@ntlworld.com...
> Eric Walker wrote:
> >
> > Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer read?
>
> Non UK readers may not have heard about the undereducated nutters, a
> couple of years ago, who trashed a doctor's home in South Wales
because
> her profession was given as "Paediatrician".
For what it's worth, my bowdlerised MW suggests that nitty-gritty comes
from "orig. black scatological slang: rhyming euphemism". So while there
are no grounds for a nitty-gritty racism ban, there are grounds for (I
can't say it, I can't say it) a nitty-gritty dirt ban.
--
Phil C.
_______________________________
philandwoody"at"meem"dot"freeserve"dot"co"dot"uk
Mike Stevens
news:rjnyxrebjypebsgpb...@news.cis.dfn.de...
> The OED, as usual, dispels the smoke:
>
> Also pique-nique, pick-nick, pic nic. [Occurs (in references
> to foreign countries) from 1748, but apparently not before
> circa 1800 as an English institution . . . .
>
> There are notes referencing the term's being "of recent
> introduction" into French by 1691, and in use in Germany in
> 1748 and Sweden in 1788.
>
> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer read?
Sadly the USA contains a fair number of people who take to account of
anything that happened outside the USA, because to them such places
don't really exist. I hope that doesn't give any offence to anyone in
this group.
--
Mike Stevens
"Million-to-one chances come up nine times out of ten." (Terry
Pratchett)
Off-list replies, please to michael...@which.net
Visit my web site at http://www.mike-stevens.co.uk
John Dean
"Tony Cooper" <tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:aburbo$lbp0p$1...@ID-113505.news.dfncis.de...
> "Emery" <n...@this.org> wrote in message
> news:abukaf$labed$1...@ID-93256.news.dfncis.de...
> I do not know who the author of the following paragraph
> is,
> and I quote it only for illustrative
> purposes,
>
> soc.culture.irish - by Greig Carlin (aka: Humanitas, and
> others) In Greig's version, the term came from
> "picaninny"...a word for a black child, but Greig included
> the lynching part. I've also heard claims that
> "pickaninny" means select any of them, and they are dumb as
> ninnies. The less gullible think it comes from pequenino,
> Portugese for small.
>
--
John Dean
Oxford
De-frag to reply
Joona I Palaste
on alt.usage.english:
> "Eric Walker" <ewa...@owlcroft.com> wrote in message
> news:rjnyxrebjypebsgpb...@news.cis.dfn.de...
>> The OED, as usual, dispels the smoke:
>>
>> Also pique-nique, pick-nick, pic nic. [Occurs (in references
>> to foreign countries) from 1748, but apparently not before
>> circa 1800 as an English institution . . . .
>>
>> There are notes referencing the term's being "of recent
>> introduction" into French by 1691, and in use in Germany in
>> 1748 and Sweden in 1788.
>>
>> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer read?
> Sadly the USA contains a fair number of people who take to account of
> anything that happened outside the USA, because to them such places
> don't really exist. I hope that doesn't give any offence to anyone in
> this group.
ITYM "take no account"?
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"You have moved your mouse, for these changes to take effect you must shut down
and restart your computer. Do you want to restart your computer now?"
- Karri Kalpio
Tony Cooper
news:ac0468$ksa$1...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk...
You're mixing terms, John. Pequenino is the origin of
"pickaninny" or "picaninny". Picnic has origins in
pique-nique. Pickninny was once a commonly heard term for
a small, black child.
Tony Cooper
news:ac05va$bu6$3...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi...
> Mike Stevens <mike...@which.net> scribbled the following
> on alt.usage.english:
> > "Eric Walker" <ewa...@owlcroft.com> wrote in message
> >
news:rjnyxrebjypebsgpb...@news.cis.dfn.de...
> >> The OED, as usual, dispels the smoke:
> >>
> >> Also pique-nique, pick-nick, pic nic. [Occurs (in
references
> >> to foreign countries) from 1748, but apparently not
before
> >> circa 1800 as an English institution . . . .
> >>
> >> There are notes referencing the term's being "of recent
> >> introduction" into French by 1691, and in use in
Germany in
> >> 1748 and Sweden in 1788.
> >>
> >> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer
read?
>
> > Sadly the USA contains a fair number of people who take
to account of
> > anything that happened outside the USA, because to them
such places
> > don't really exist. I hope that doesn't give any
offence to anyone in
> > this group.
>
> ITYM "take no account"?
Also, please inform the poster that Oklahoma is in the USA.
I have never been in Oklahoma, but I am assured that it
exists and is still here.
felix
> Once these blacklisting snowballs get rolling, it's nearly hopeless to
> stop them. If enough people *believe* a word has unpleasant origins, it
> becomes just as tainted as if it actually had them. I'm reluctant to
> mention "squaw," because I don't want to start a big discussion, but
> it's being removed from placenames for similar, debatable reasons.
I heard on the radio that another phrase the UK police are forbidden
to use is "Good egg". I've no idea what this is all about. It's fallen
out of general use since Bertie Wooster.
felix
Dr Robin Bignall
wrote:
>david56 <bass.a...@ntlworld.com> scribbled the following
>on alt.usage.english:
>> Eric Walker wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, 16 May 2002 09:08:31 +0100, david56 wrote:
>>>
>>> >Eric Walker wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer read?
>>> >
>>> >Non UK readers may not have heard about the undereducated
>>> >nutters, a couple of years ago, who trashed a doctor's home in
>>> >South Wales because her profession was given as
>>> >"Paediatrician".
>>>
>>> No, that one made it over here. Kinda makes ya proud to be
>>> human, proud, an' . . . an' a little bit humble.
>
>> What astonished me was not the misunderstanding (simple ignorance can be
>> excused), but the belief that a child molester would announce the fact
>> on her business card.
>
>That's precisely what astounded me as well. Surely the lynch mob would
>have thought at some point "Hey, isn't it weird that this guy publically
>admits to being a child molester?".
The paediatrician was a woman, as stated above. The real problem is
that of associating the word 'think' with the word 'mob'.
The leader of that mob was an unmarried mother, living on benefits, of
course. At the time that she was giving her most vitriolic interview
in front of the massed ranks of TV cameras, her three year-old son,
whom she had left alone, managed to find his way out of her flat into
the street, where he was found dressed only in a filthy nappy
(diaper). It was widely reported in the national press at the time.
It's a good job that he was not found by one of them there
paedithings, or he could have been in real trouble.
--
wrmst rgrds
RB...(docrobi...@ntlworld.com)
Donna Richoux
Please forgive me for a moment while I raise my voice. THERE WAS NO MOB.
Even shortly after it happened, people talked about this event as if
there were howling mobs, flaming torches, and heaved bricks -- THERE
WEREN'T. Everybody hear that?
What there was, was "the word paedo painted repeatedly on the front door
and porch" in the middle of the night. Silently, and quite possibly
solitarily. It might have been the work of several people (as the
article calls it, "a hate gang", but it was no mob.
Here is an article from shortly after the event:
This_Britain
29 August 2000
Vandals confuse paediatrician with paedophile.
A paediatrician has been forced to leave her home after vandals
confused her for a paedophile. Dr Yvette Cloete woke to find her
home had been daubed with the word "Paedo" in the middle of the
night. She is a paediatrician at the Royal Gwent Hospital in
Newport. The attack is being investigated by police who have
confirmed that the self-styled vigilantes confused the word
paediatrician for paedophile. The hate gang struck at Dr Cloete's
home in the quiet village of St Bride's where she lives with her
brother. The word paedo had been painted repeatedly on the front
door and porch of the detached house. Dr Cloete, 42, confirmed she
has left the property as a result of the attack last weekend. She
said: "For the time being I have moved out of the area because when
something like this happens you just cannot feel safe in your own
home. "We removed the graffiti within hours but what happened was a
terrible thing and it has been extremely distressing." The Royal
Gwent Hospital described Dr Cloete as a top class specialist in
children's diseases. A spokesman said: "This incident has been a
pointless and distressing event for Dr Cloete. "She is a valued and
respected member of the paediatric team where she has worked for
the last two and a half years." A neighbour of the doctor and her
brother said: "They are decent people who we get on very well with.
It is very unfortunate that something like this has happened."
Gwent Police said they were making "every effort" to trace whoever
painted the slogans on the doctor's home.
I think there is some perverse and frightening appeal to in the image of
being literally driven out of one's home, at night, by a howling mob of
fellow citizens, that makes us all exaggerate what really happened. The
truth was bad enough, as it was, but it wasn't that bad.
Just my telling you that, writing that string of words about the howling
etc., plants an image in your brain, which is more likely to be
remembered several years from now than the truth (quiet graffiti on
porch). Please remember that when you wonder why history gets distorted.
Back to Eric's question -- there was no mention in this story, or the
few others I've seen, of any action of the doctor's (such as a newspaper
announcement) triggering the incident. It may still have been true and
been reported somewhere else.
--
Onward & upward -- Donna Richoux
Schainbaum, Robert
>
> Please forgive me for a moment while I raise my voice. THERE WAS NO MOB.
> Even shortly after it happened, people talked about this event as if
> there were howling mobs, flaming torches, and heaved bricks -- THERE
> WEREN'T. Everybody hear that?
>
> What there was, was "the word paedo painted repeatedly on the front door
> and porch" in the middle of the night. Silently, and quite possibly
> solitarily. It might have been the work of several people (as the
> article calls it, "a hate gang", but it was no mob.
Donna, you dutifully looked it up. I checked it myself in the
Telegraph, but I was silent. As a kid, you probably relished telling
your little friends there was no Santa Claus. I for one will continue
to believe that there was a howling mob and that they did all kinds of
beastliness to the pediatrician.
That's my England (or Wales). A land where a yob can still be a yob.
wooster
You say I was reproached by a Metropolitan police training officer at
the Police Federation conference for using a banned phrase which - if
used by officers - would, it was claimed, lead to disciplinary action
(Why nitty gritty has been ruled a no-no in the police lexicon, May
15).
I have checked this claim. It is untrue. There is no list of banned
words. Nor can I find any evidence that the phrase has been banned or
established as having racist connotations. The Metropolitan police has
issued sensible advice on the way in which different ethnic groups
describe themselves or prefer to be described. It offers guidance to
officers on appropriate terminology, which does not include the
phrase. Much more important is the understanding that officers should
not use language with racial overtones that is designed to be
offensive. This would rightly be a disciplinary matter.
The vast majority of the police service is committed to tackling
racism. This is a serious and an important commitment. We must resist
any attempt to undermine it by distorting, trivialising or ridiculing
the policy.
John Denham MP
Minister for police and crime reduction
While we should applaud efforts by the police to eliminate racism, the
censorship of "nitty gritty" is not farcical and etymologically
ignorant. The association of "nitty gritty" with the slave trade is
completely specious. The word, which appears to have been an
African-American coinage and first recorded in 1963, is most likely a
reduplication of "gritty", ie composed of minute particles.
Jonathon Green
wooster
You calling my egg racist?
"Nitty-gritty" and "good egg" are apparently offensive terms
By Philip Howard
May 16, 2002
Scene: the Police Federation conference, Bournemouth. John Denham,
Home Office Minister, is speaking: "To get down to the nitty-gritty .
. ."
Chris Jefford, Metropolitan Police constable, interrupts him from the
floor: "That phrase is banned. If I used it, I would face a discipline
charge."
The police apparently believe that "nitty-gritty" refers to the debris
left at the bottom of a slave ship after a voyage. That is,
pullulating mounds of lice and eggs of lice. That is deemed to be
offensive to the descendants of slaves. To which the only possible
reply is: "Pull the other one, Flatfoot: it's got lice on."
This is not just politically correct nonsense. It is politically
moronic nonsense with stilts on. Mastery of the English language may
not be the most important qualification for our police force. Few
policemen, apart from fictional ones such as Adam Dalgleish and
Roderick Alleyn, have been much good at English. But somebody in
Scotland Yard must have access to a good dictionary. Westminster
Library is just across the street.
Let us try to help them, if anybody there reads the papers.
"Nitty-gritty" is one of a huge number of rhyming jingles that occur
particularly in English and other Germanic languages. They proliferate
in our oldest literature, such as Chaucer and "Piers Plowman".
Linguists call them reduplicative words, and the propensity of English
to create them "reduplication". Others call them ricochet words or
Siamese-twin words.
Scholars categorise them into groups, such as "onomatopoeic"
(bow-wow), "contrived" (Handy-Andy), "intentional" (gruesome twosome),
and "accidental" (picnic). The first appearance of "nitty-gritty" in
print was in Time magazine in August 1963: "The Negroes present would
know perfectly well that the nitty-gritty of a situation is the
essentials of it."
It bubbled to the surface in the States in the Sixties as part of the
new groovyspea, such as "right on". Cautious lexicographers describe
its etymology as "unknown". Less cautious ones opine: "US Negro
origin. Semantics obscure, but probably referring to unpleasant
(‘gritty') but basic realities." In reduplicatives, one half is the
semantic driver, the other half is the jingle-jangler. Stuart Flexner
in I Hear America Singing (Princeton, 1976) attributes the phrase to
the black militants of the 1960s, and the prevalence of "grit-like
nits".
The origin of slang, like the origin of nits, is seldom capable of
proof. But new slang passes by word of mouth for only a very short
period before somebody writes it down or otherwise records it.
It is inconceivable that the phrase "nitty-gritty" lay dormant in
Black American for a century after the last slave ship sailed without
somebody like Harriet Beecher Stowe writing it down. If you insist on
an origin, the best bet is that the "gritty" is the leading half of
the reduplication, and the "nitty" is the jingle. The phrase had a
great vogue in American and among those in British business and
managerial circles who were keen to appear "right-on" and groovy. It
became a thundering cliché. And died of shame. It is now very vieux
jeu and used only jocularly.
To assert that "nitty-gritty" is racist is as moronic as saying that
"niggardly" is an insult to black people. It is namby-pamby,
niminy-piminy, airy-fairy mumbo jumbo.
As for the police ban on the phrase "good egg", because of its
supposed rhyming slang association with "egg and spoon"/coon, words
fail us. The murderer of Macduff's son in Macbeth cries: "What you
egg! Young fry of treachery!" Bishops and curates were fussing about
bad eggs being good in parts a century ago. "Good egg" became popular
slang at Oxford University while P.G. Wodehouse was up there. Hence
the proliferation of good eggs, beans and crumpets in the Master's
work.
We cannot allow the English language to be kidnapped by ignoramuses in
the race relations industry or wimps among Chief Police Officer Plods.
Of course, it behoves us all, including the police, to use sensitive
language and not to cause offence.
The Behove is a very rare beast. Some say it is a mythical creature.
The fault, dear police constable, lies not in our vocabulary, but in
our canteen culture.
Shakib Otaqui
tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote:
> > [...]
> > Correct me if my memory has failed me here, but was not the mob
> > excited by a reference to the doctor in a newspaper? Something
> > like "so-and-so, a paediatrician, has opened offices at ---"?
>
> Please forgive me for a moment while I raise my voice. THERE WAS NO MOB.
> Even shortly after it happened, people talked about this event as if
> there were howling mobs, flaming torches, and heaved bricks -- THERE
> WEREN'T. Everybody hear that?
You're right that there were no mobs in this particular case.
But the panic about paedophiles has generated many ugly mob
scenes elsewhere and at least one murder.
--
Philip Powell
<pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> writes
>david56 <bass.a...@ntlworld.com> scribbled the following
>on alt.usage.english:
>> Eric Walker wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, 16 May 2002 09:08:31 +0100, david56 wrote:
>>>
>>> >Eric Walker wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer read?
>>> >
>>> >Non UK readers may not have heard about the undereducated
>>> >nutters, a couple of years ago, who trashed a doctor's home in
>>> >South Wales because her profession was given as
>>> >"Paediatrician".
>>>
>>> No, that one made it over here. Kinda makes ya proud to be
>>> human, proud, an' . . . an' a little bit humble.
>
>> What astonished me was not the misunderstanding (simple ignorance can be
>> excused), but the belief that a child molester would announce the fact
>> on her business card.
>
>That's precisely what astounded me as well. Surely the lynch mob would
>have thought at some point "Hey, isn't it weird that this guy publically
>admits to being a child molester?".
Never underestimate the human capacity for stupidity.
--
Philip Powell
Looking north across the Derwent Valley and Northumberland
to The Cheviot
Eric Walker
[...]
>Even then the mob should have shown a modicum of common sense.
Mob . . . common sense . . . I'm not sure those terms can
comfortably reside in the same clause.
Don Aitken
wrote:
What has happened, as often in these cases, is that different stories
about related events get conflated. There *were* mobs that weekend,
but they weren't in South Wales, they were in Portsmouth, which is
hundreds of miles away. Both sets of people were acting in response to
the same newspaper reports. The "News of the World" was running a
series (soon discontinued at the request of the police) on
"paedophiles in your town", in which they gave names and addresses.
Inevitably, the various responses, which, oddly, were mostly not
targetted at the addresses given in the paper, became part of the same
story.
--
Don Aitken
Donna Richoux
> Letters from the London Guardian newspaper this morning:
>
> You say I was reproached by a Metropolitan police training officer at
> the Police Federation conference for using a banned phrase which - if
> used by officers - would, it was claimed, lead to disciplinary action
> (Why nitty gritty has been ruled a no-no in the police lexicon, May
> 15).
>
> I have checked this claim. It is untrue. There is no list of banned
> words. Nor can I find any evidence that the phrase has been banned or
> established as having racist connotations. The Metropolitan police has
> issued sensible advice on the way in which different ethnic groups
> describe themselves or prefer to be described. It offers guidance to
> officers on appropriate terminology, which does not include the
> phrase. Much more important is the understanding that officers should
> not use language with racial overtones that is designed to be
> offensive. This would rightly be a disciplinary matter.
>
> The vast majority of the police service is committed to tackling
> racism. This is a serious and an important commitment. We must resist
> any attempt to undermine it by distorting, trivialising or ridiculing
> the policy.
>
> John Denham MP
> Minister for police and crime reduction
That is really interesting! The Minister for Police can't find any
evidence of such a list or guidelines, even though the officers believe
it exists and we saw articles about the proposals a few years ago. Maybe
they never made it past the proposal stage, yet still linger in the
popular consciousness.
The Guardian had a related article, too, which explained the "good egg"
theory:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4413720,00.html
-- QUOTE --
Why nitty gritty has been ruled a no-no in the police lexicon
Nick Hopkins, crime correspondent
Wednesday May 15, 2002
[snip]
Mr Denham was reproached by the audience, who pointed out the phrase had
been effectively banned by some forces, including the Metropolitan
police, because it is thought to originate in the 18th century slave
trade. "If I used nitty gritty I would face a disciplinary charge," said
PC Chris Jefford, who challenged the minister.
Mr Denham's admission that he was "not aware" it could cause offence led
to a chorus of "It's banned" from the floor.
"Good egg" is deemed to be too closely associated with "egg and spoon" -
rhyming slang for "coon".
PC David Nixon, who advises Met officers on disciplinary matters, said
there was no list of banned phrases, but officers could face a charge of
breaching "tolerance" codes if anyone complained. "It is a subjective
test."
The Met said yesterday that no officers had faced disciplinary
charges for using nitty gritty or good egg, but confirmed it urged
staff to "make sure the language they use would not cause offence."
---END QUOTE----
Well, I see the Minister's letter as a positive development. If *he*
says there is no such prohibition, the police have to believe it.
--
Best --- Donna Richoux
Simon R. Hughes
>
> Never underestimate the human capacity for stupidity.
The problem is no matter how low we aim, we always
(mis)underestimate the human capacity for stupidity.
--
Simon R. Hughes
<!-- signature-challenged -->
Mark Wallace
> On 16 May 2002 09:20:58 GMT, Joona I Palaste wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> Even then the mob should have shown a modicum of common sense.
>
> Mob . . . common sense . . . I'm not sure those terms can
> comfortably reside in the same clause.
I think you'd find that they go together like a horse and carriage,
if you were to take the time to think, before commenting.
--
Mark Wallace
-----------------------------------------------------
For the intelligent approach to nasty humour, visit:
The Anglo-American Humour (humor) Site
http://humorpages.virtualave.net/mainmenu.htm
-----------------------------------------------------
Raymond S. Wise
"Mike Stevens" <mike...@which.net> wrote in message
news:q8ME8.2439$Iv.2...@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com...
> "Eric Walker" <ewa...@owlcroft.com> wrote in message
> news:rjnyxrebjypebsgpb...@news.cis.dfn.de...
>
> > The OED, as usual, dispels the smoke:
> >
> > Also pique-nique, pick-nick, pic nic. [Occurs (in references
> > to foreign countries) from 1748, but apparently not before
> > circa 1800 as an English institution . . . .
> >
> > There are notes referencing the term's being "of recent
> > introduction" into French by 1691, and in use in Germany in
> > 1748 and Sweden in 1788.
> >
> > Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer read?
>
> Sadly the USA contains a fair number of people who take to account of
> anything that happened outside the USA, because to them such places
> don't really exist. I hope that doesn't give any offence to anyone in
> this group.
>
Eric Walker asked "Can no one any longer read?" Unfortunately, it is not
simply a question of reading. I expect that many people have heard the tales
of the false etymologies of "picnic," "squaw," and "handicapped," looked
them up in a dictionary containing etymologies, and concluded that what they
had recently been told about the history of the word was an urban legend.
But I expect that others read the dictionary's etymology and take it as
evidence of a conspiracy to hide the "truth."
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Rick Kitchen
> Eric Walker wrote:
> >
>
> couple of years ago, who trashed a doctor's home in South Wales because
> her profession was given as "Paediatrician".
And the District of Columbia official who was excoriated for using the
word "niggardly".
Rick Kitchen
Mark Wallace
You must be unfamiliar with British political-speak.
What the above says is: "Yes, there is such a list of banned words
and terms -- but we don't call it that, and we would not present
using words or terms from the list as the charge, when taking
disciplinary action against officers who use them".
Donna Richoux
So, Mark, enlighten me. What if -- just supposing -- what I said really
was true, and there was no list of forbidden terms, and the Minister
wanted the public and the officers to know that. What would he have said
differently in that case from what he did say?
--
Curious -- Donna Richoux
Peter Duncanson
Perhaps the mob howled silently.
--
Peter D.
UK
Emery
In article <abvfl1$l3nsd$1...@ID-113505.news.dfncis.de>, "Tony
Cooper" <tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>"Emery" <n...@this.org> wrote in message
>news:abv88g$lctlf$1...@ID-93256.news.dfncis.de...
>> In article <aburbo$lbp0p$1...@ID-113505.news.dfncis.de>,
>"Tony
>> Cooper" <tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> >"Emery" <n...@this.org> wrote in message
>> >news:abukaf$labed$1...@ID-93256.news.dfncis.de...
Emery cut and pasted the following:
>> > I do not know who the author of the following paragraph
>> > is, and I quote it only for illustrative
>> > purposes, omitting the infamous "n word"as indicated:
>> >
snip
>> > The word was short for 'pick a [n word]' to lynch.
>> >
>> ...
>> >
>> >Why do you omit "nigger"?
[...]
>> I was quoting someone else who omitted it from their >quotation of
>> someone else who said it.
>
>You said you omitted the infamous "n word".
No, I did not say that. Please read the following carefully.
I, Emery, am _not_ the author of the following phrase:
"...I quote it only for illustrative purposes, omitting the
infamous "n word"as indicated".
Someone other than myself wrote that phrase. I cut and pasted it
from a web site.
> That would lead
>me to believe that the original writer wrote "nigger" and
>you omitted it.
There were two levels of quotation in my post. I was quoting
someone (call that person "party A"). Party A was, in turn,
quoting another person, call that person "party B". Party B made
a statement in which the word "nigger" was used. Party A then
quoted party B. In the course of quoting party B, party A
changed the word "nigger" to "[n word]". I then quoted party A
quoting party B, leaving party A's change intact.
>The brackets suggest this also. It's very
>clear that you had no intention to be offensive, but the
>substitution seems to me to be a futile and weak gesture.
>
I agree that it is a futile gesture. I would not have done it
myself.
Molly
113505.news.dfncis.de>, Tony Cooper (Tony Cooper
<tony_co...@yahoo.com>) wrote
>Why do you omit "nigger"? It is certainly offensive, but
>anyone reading this automatically knows what you mean. If
>you know the word is "nigger", and the reader knows the word
>is "nigger", is writing "[n word]" somehow less offensive?
>Is a black person somehow less insulted by being called an
>[n word]?
Dick Gregory's glorious autobiography was entitled "nigger" (yes, with a
small "n") - and the dedication read (IIRC - the book was one of the
many I lost in the flood): "Dear Mom: any time you hear someone use
the word 'nigger', just remember - they are advertising my book"!
--
Molly
Spammers are like tapeworms: they leech the life from the Internet and
provide nothing of benefit in return. (Patricia A. Shaffer)
Molly
com>, Richard Ashton (Richard Ashton <'{R}'@semolina.org>) wrote
>Mobs are a collection of people who have abrogated any form of syphilization.
Can you explain that one, please, Richard? It's not in my dictionary,
and I assume that it doesn't have a lot to do with syphilis.
Molly
>, Donna Richoux (Donna Richoux <tr...@euronet.nl>) wrote
>Please forgive me for a moment while I raise my voice. THERE WAS NO MOB.
>Even shortly after it happened, people talked about this event as if
>there were howling mobs, flaming torches, and heaved bricks -- THERE
>WEREN'T. Everybody hear that?
>
>What there was, was "the word paedo painted repeatedly on the front door
>and porch" in the middle of the night. Silently, and quite possibly
>solitarily. It might have been the work of several people (as the
>article calls it, "a hate gang", but it was no mob.
>
>Here is an article from shortly after the event:
>
> This_Britain
>
> 29 August 2000
>
> Vandals confuse paediatrician with paedophile.
>
> A paediatrician has been forced to leave her home after vandals
> confused her for a paedophile.
ObUCLE - ouch, ouch ouch! "Confused her FOR a paedophile"?????
> Dr Yvette Cloete woke to find her
> home had been daubed with the word "Paedo" in the middle of the
> night. She is a paediatrician at the Royal Gwent Hospital in
> Newport. The attack is being investigated by police who have
> confirmed that the self-styled vigilantes confused the word
> paediatrician for paedophile. The hate gang struck at Dr Cloete's
> home in the quiet village of St Bride's where she lives with her
> brother.
I wouldn't be totally convinced that a "hate gang" of "self-styled
vigilantes" (which latter term implies that the police had located and
interviewed them, or they couldn't have self-styled themselves as
anything) is that much different from a "mob". OK, not necessarily a
"howling mob", but a "mob" natheless.
Molly
tlworld.com>, Mike Stevens (Mike Stevens <mike...@which.net>) wrote
>Sadly the USA contains a fair number of people who take to account of
>anything that happened outside the USA, because to them such places
>don't really exist. I hope that doesn't give any offence to anyone in
>this group.
I had a very interesting exchange not long ago with an American lady on
alt.sci.seti, who had had absolutely no idea that the US were
practically the only country in the world to use MM/DD/YY, and it had
never occurred to her that anybody, anywhere, used DD/MM/YY (although
she had heard of YYYYMMDD in programming terms). Once the idea was put
to her, though, she instantly saw the logic of it - which is to my mind
one of the great glories of Usenet - the global interchange of concepts.
She was, as a result of the conversation, fully willing to understand
that the more insular Americans urging everyone else to "remember 9/11!"
just made the rest of us go "Huh? What happened on 9th November?".
Molly
Phil C. (Phil C. <nob...@nowhere.co.uk>) wrote
>For what it's worth, my bowdlerised MW suggests that nitty-gritty comes
>from "orig. black scatological slang: rhyming euphemism". So while there
>are no grounds for a nitty-gritty racism ban, there are grounds for (I
>can't say it, I can't say it) a nitty-gritty dirt ban.
So what you aren't saying, aren't saying, is that "nitty-gritty" means
"shitty"?
So where did it acquire the meaning - ascribed to it from the first
noted reference - of "down to basics"?
Molly
gle.com>, wooster (wooster <mrberti...@yahoo.com>) wrote
>Cautious lexicographers describe
>its etymology as "unknown". Less cautious ones opine: "US Negro
>origin. Semantics obscure, but probably referring to unpleasant
>(‘gritty') but basic realities." In reduplicatives, one half is the
>semantic driver, the other half is the jingle-jangler. Stuart Flexner
>in I Hear America Singing (Princeton, 1976) attributes the phrase to
>the black militants of the 1960s, and the prevalence of "grit-like
>nits".
(snip)
>If you insist on
>an origin, the best bet is that the "gritty" is the leading half of
>the reduplication, and the "nitty" is the jingle.
Isn't there something that they eat in Southern USA, called "grits"?
I'm not sure what it is, because I've never been there, and so I've
never eaten it. But is it "poor trash" food, which might have been fed
to slaves, and possibly given rise to the phrase?
(Just because a term originates in Afro-American speech, though, doesn't
mean it's racist. In fact, one could claim that a term which originated
in that manner couldn't possibly be anti-black racist; it could be
anti-white racist, such as "honky", but which of us would have the right
to take exception to terms such as that?)
>As for the police ban on the phrase "good egg", because of its
>supposed rhyming slang association with "egg and spoon"/coon, words
>fail us.
One: that's not how rhyming slang works. Rhyming slang based on "coon
= spoon" would be simply "egg", not "good egg".
Two: "Coon" is not a word in wide use in the UK, compared to the USA.
We have our own nasty racist words, but "coon" isn't a common one. If
anything, the instant resonance from "coon", for anyone of middle-age or
over, would be Davy Crockett's cap.
Molly
Joona I Palaste (Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi>) wrote
>(Since when did women became a minority, though?)
In the western world, in the last couple of generations. 106 males are
born for every 100 females. In the past, this unnatural discrepancy was
more than compensated for by wars (just about the only justification for
such boy-hobbies, to my mind). More recently, there has been no such
adjustment - other than, perhaps, dangerous drink-drivers, who are
fractionally more likely to kill their(male)selves than their random
innocent victims - who, in any case, would have a 1.06:1 chance of being
male before the car reached them...
Einde O'Callaghan
>
> On Thu, 16 May 2002, in article <1767eu8qk0fd1p131p0eh050t7gkhiqleg@4ax.
> com>, Richard Ashton (Richard Ashton <'{R}'@semolina.org>) wrote
>
> >Mobs are a collection of people who have abrogated any form of syphilization.
>
> Can you explain that one, please, Richard? It's not in my dictionary,
> and I assume that it doesn't have a lot to do with syphilis.
I thought he was trying to make a rather poor pun on "civilisation".
Regasrds, Einde O'Callaghan
Mason Barge
wrote:
>Eric Walker <ewa...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
So this is all supposition? Personally, I think it was done by
somebody who was traumatized by dull hypodermic syringes in his
childhood and knew damn well what "paediatrician" means.
--
Mason Barge
"People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like."
-- Abraham Lincoln
Mason Barge
<ewa...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>On 16 May 2002 09:20:58 GMT, Joona I Palaste wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>>Even then the mob should have shown a modicum of common sense.
>
>Mob . . . common sense . . . I'm not sure those terms can
>comfortably reside in the same clause.
I was a bit boggled, too. Was it ironic?
Mason Barge
<nos...@mockfords.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>On Thu, 16 May 2002, in article <5d56a972.0205...@posting.goo
>gle.com>, wooster (wooster <mrberti...@yahoo.com>) wrote
>
>>Cautious lexicographers describe
>>its etymology as "unknown". Less cautious ones opine: "US Negro
>>origin. Semantics obscure, but probably referring to unpleasant
>>(組ritty') but basic realities." In reduplicatives, one half is the
>>semantic driver, the other half is the jingle-jangler. Stuart Flexner
>>in I Hear America Singing (Princeton, 1976) attributes the phrase to
>>the black militants of the 1960s, and the prevalence of "grit-like
>>nits".
>
>(snip)
>
>>If you insist on
>>an origin, the best bet is that the "gritty" is the leading half of
>>the reduplication, and the "nitty" is the jingle.
>
>Isn't there something that they eat in Southern USA, called "grits"?
>I'm not sure what it is, because I've never been there, and so I've
>never eaten it. But is it "poor trash" food, which might have been fed
>to slaves, and possibly given rise to the phrase?
>
HARRUMPH!
Grits is porridge made from corn meal eaten with butter, salt and
pepper. Everybody in the South eats it, pretty much. I suppose it
would fill the place of hashbrowned potatoes in the standard
bacon-and-eggs breakfast eaten in other parts of the country.
It is plain fare, but eaten by rich and poor alike. Again, I would
use potatoes as an analogy.
I imagine it shares its etymology with "nitty-gritty", since it has a
gritty consistency when raw and, to a degree, even when cooked.
>(Just because a term originates in Afro-American speech, though, doesn't
>mean it's racist. In fact, one could claim that a term which originated
>in that manner couldn't possibly be anti-black racist; it could be
>anti-white racist, such as "honky", but which of us would have the right
>to take exception to terms such as that?)
>
>>As for the police ban on the phrase "good egg", because of its
>>supposed rhyming slang association with "egg and spoon"/coon, words
>>fail us.
>
>One: that's not how rhyming slang works. Rhyming slang based on "coon
>= spoon" would be simply "egg", not "good egg".
>
>Two: "Coon" is not a word in wide use in the UK, compared to the USA.
>We have our own nasty racist words, but "coon" isn't a common one. If
>anything, the instant resonance from "coon", for anyone of middle-age or
>over, would be Davy Crockett's cap.
--
Dr Robin Bignall
<shu...@tromso.online.no> wrote:
>Thus Spake Philip Powell:
>>
>> Never underestimate the human capacity for stupidity.
>
>The problem is no matter how low we aim, we always
>(mis)underestimate the human capacity for stupidity.
True. Civilised people, no matter whether they're educated or not,
simply do not realise just how stupid (and vicious and tenacious) the
uncivilised can be, until they come up against one or several of them.
It is no surprise that the 'News of the World' is, and always has
been, Britain's largest selling newspaper, way ahead of all of the
other weeklies and dailies. Its highlighting of paedophiles, with
photos, started the mob baying. I use mob in the sense of rabble:
lowest class of people. They don't necessarily have to be parading in
the street to be a rabble. The saddest thing was seeing children as
young as 5 or 6 on the streets of Portsmouth chanting "Kill the
paedos", egged on by their parents. I see no difference between that
and the chants of "Kill the Protestants/Catholics" in Ireland or "Kill
the Jews" in Palestine. I personally feel that such children are in a
hell of a lot of danger from their own parents.
--
wrmst rgrds
RB...(docrobi...@ntlworld.com)
Padraig Breathnach
I thought he was trying to make a good pun; that it was poor was
unintended.
PB
Robert Bannister
> "Joona I Palaste" <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
> news:ac05va$bu6$3...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi...
> > Mike Stevens <mike...@which.net> scribbled the following
> > on alt.usage.english:
> > > "Eric Walker" <ewa...@owlcroft.com> wrote in message
> > >
> news:rjnyxrebjypebsgpb...@news.cis.dfn.de...
> > >> The OED, as usual, dispels the smoke:
> > >>
> > >> Also pique-nique, pick-nick, pic nic. [Occurs (in
> references
> > >> to foreign countries) from 1748, but apparently not
> before
> > >> circa 1800 as an English institution . . . .
> > >>
> > >> There are notes referencing the term's being "of recent
> > >> introduction" into French by 1691, and in use in
> Germany in
> > >> 1748 and Sweden in 1788.
> > >>
> > >> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer
> read?
> >
> > > Sadly the USA contains a fair number of people who take
> to account of
> > > anything that happened outside the USA, because to them
> such places
> > > don't really exist. I hope that doesn't give any
> offence to anyone in
> > > this group.
> >
> > ITYM "take no account"?
>
> Also, please inform the poster that Oklahoma is in the USA.
> I have never been in Oklahoma, but I am assured that it
> exists and is still here.
It's a musical, not a real place!
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
>
>
> So, Mark, enlighten me. What if -- just supposing -- what I said really
> was true, and there was no list of forbidden terms, and the Minister
> wanted the public and the officers to know that. What would he have said
> differently in that case from what he did say?
When a politician says something, it's a lie even when it's true.
--
Rob Bannister
John Dean
"Tony Cooper" <tony_co...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ac0fi7$lu0r1$1...@ID-113505.news.dfncis.de...
> "John Dean" <john...@frag.lineone.net> wrote in message
> news:ac0468$ksa$1...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk...
> >
> > >
> > And the least gullible favour French pique-nique
>
> You're mixing terms, John. Pequenino is the origin of
> "pickaninny" or "picaninny". Picnic has origins in
> pique-nique. Pickninny was once a commonly heard term for
> a small, black child.
>
Ah - Gotcha, T!
--
John Dean
Oxford
De-frag to reply
Tony Cooper
"Molly" <nos...@mockfords.clara.co.uk> wrote in message >
Dick Gregory's glorious autobiography was entitled "nigger"
(yes, with a
> small "n") - and the dedication read (IIRC - the book was
one of the
> many I lost in the flood): "Dear Mom: any time you hear
someone use
> the word 'nigger', just remember - they are advertising my
book"!
> --
There is a more current book out - "Nigger - the Strange
Career of a Troublesome Word" - by Harvard Law School's
Randall Kennedy. The book cover has "nigger" (small "n")
--
Tony Cooper aka: Tony_Co...@Yahoo.com
Provider of Jots & Tittles in very large type, and the rest
of the title in much smaller type down a few inches from the
main title. Evidently, such titles attract attention and
add to the sales.
Tony Cooper
wrote in message
> > >Mobs are a collection of people who have abrogated any
form of syphilization.
> >
> > Can you explain that one, please, Richard? It's not in
my dictionary,
> > and I assume that it doesn't have a lot to do with
syphilis.
>
> I thought he was trying to make a rather poor pun on
"civilisation".
>
I take it that you are not going to clap as much as once.
Gonnareada nother post to see how this comes out.
Tony Cooper
message
> Donna, you dutifully looked it up. I checked it myself in
the
> Telegraph, but I was silent. As a kid, you probably
relished telling
> your little friends there was no Santa Claus. I for one
will continue
> to believe that there was a howling mob and that they did
all kinds of
> beastliness to the pediatrician.
>
> That's my England (or Wales). A land where a yob can
still be a yob.
Is it my imagination, or is Robert Schainbaum more active as
a poster now than he was before he left the group for good?
Tony Cooper
> I wouldn't be totally convinced that a "hate gang" of
"self-styled
> vigilantes" (which latter term implies that the police had
located and
> interviewed them, or they couldn't have self-styled
themselves as
> anything) is that much different from a "mob". OK, not
necessarily a
> "howling mob", but a "mob" natheless.
I will have to add this to the list of facts that I don't
know: what is the minimum number of participants for a
group to be declared a mob? If they are one short, can they
be called a rabble? Is there an upper limit to a mob count
above which they become a horde?
Has anyone ever seen a sleeping rabble? Before it was
roused?
Einde O'Callaghan
>
> "Einde O'Callaghan" <einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de>
> wrote in message
>
> > > >Mobs are a collection of people who have abrogated any
> form of syphilization.
> > >
> > > Can you explain that one, please, Richard? It's not in
> my dictionary,
> > > and I assume that it doesn't have a lot to do with
> syphilis.
> >
> > I thought he was trying to make a rather poor pun on
> "civilisation".
> >
>
> I take it that you are not going to clap as much as once.
> Gonnareada nother post to see how this comes out.
>
Regards, Einde O'Callaghan
Jeffrey Goldberg
> Two: "Coon" is not a word in wide use in the UK, compared to the USA.
And since rhyming slang is unheard of in the US, the rhyming slang theory
for "good egg" -> "coon" seems remarkably implausible.
-j
--
Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/
Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice
Jeffrey Goldberg
in <pU28QGEx...@clara.net>:
> In the western world, in the last couple of generations. 106 males are
> born for every 100 females. In the past, this unnatural discrepancy was
> more than compensated for by wars
Actually wars were not the only thing that brought the sexes into parity.
First of all, for every 100 conceptions of females there are about 120
males, but males miscarry at a far higher rate. (Remember most
miscarriages are within with the first five weeks and are not typically
recognized as miscarriages.)
The pattern continues though all stages of childhood. Males have a
systematically higher mortality rate. So (in the absense of very recent
medicine) the number of males at sexual maturity is a bit less than the
number of females. This brings things into line with Fisher's account of
equal sex ratios.
One really cool case in nature about sex ratios is the flatworm. They are
hermaphodites and in each mating encounter the two individuals will fight
it out to see who gets to be the male. The winner gets to swim away and
try to fight/mate with some other flatworm he may encounter, while the
loser will have to carry the fertilised eggs for a while and she'll have
no more breeding partners until she's laid those eggs.
The dominance hierarchies and sex changes among some fish are also
interesting.
-j
--
Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/
Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice
I rarely read top-posted, over-quoting or HTML postings.
Mark Wallace
Whilst I agree with the general sentiment of that, I'm not too crazy
about equating paedophiles with well-intentioned, law abiding,
religious people.
Paedophile: I rape children.
Jew: I pray a lot.
Ronnie Corbett: I know my place.
--
Mark Wallace
-----------------------------------------------------
Doctor Charles.
You can trust him.
http://humorpages.virtualave.net/m-pages/doc01.htm
-----------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey Goldberg
in <u6g8eugnh5s4mce1m...@4ax.com>:
> Grits is porridge made from corn meal [...]
> I imagine it shares its etymology with "nitty-gritty", since it has a
> gritty consistency when raw and, to a degree, even when cooked.
Remember that for these rhyming reduplicative forms, eg
nitty-gritty
hurley-burley
humpty dumpty (somewhat exceptional)
itsy-bitsy
eency-weency
the sound that begins the second part is always less sonorant than the
sound that begins the first one in the pair, and usually peripheral (made
at the front or the back of the mouth). This tendency (there are
exceptions) appears to hold across languages. To convince yourself of
this, just reverse the order of the pairs in some of the above and see how
they sound.
So the construction could be build around "gritty" with the "nitty" added,
or maybe (though less likely IMO) the other way 'round. But I think that
it would be a mistake to search for a root to each component. There will
be a root for at most one, with the other rhyming and added to fit the
general pattern of this construction.
Mark Wallace
> Mark Wallace <mwallac...@noknok.nl> wrote:
>
>> Donna Richoux wrote:
>>> wooster <mrberti...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Letters from the London Guardian newspaper this morning:
>>>>
>>>> You say I was reproached by a Metropolitan police training
>>>> officer at the Police Federation conference for using a banned
>>>> phrase which - if used by officers - would, it was claimed,
>>>> lead to disciplinary action (Why nitty gritty has been ruled a
>>>> no-no in the police lexicon, May 15).
>>>>
>>>> I have checked this claim. It is untrue. There is no list of
>>>> banned words. Nor can I find any evidence that the phrase has
>>>> been banned or established as having racist connotations. The
>>>> Metropolitan police has issued sensible advice on the way in
>>>> which different ethnic groups describe themselves or prefer to
>>>> be described. It offers guidance to officers on appropriate
>>>> terminology, which does not include the phrase. Much more
>>>> important is the understanding that officers should not use
>>>> language with racial overtones that is designed to be
>>>> offensive. This would rightly be a disciplinary matter.
>>>>
>>>> The vast majority of the police service is committed to
>>>> tackling racism. This is a serious and an important
>>>> commitment. We must resist any attempt to undermine it by
>>>> distorting, trivialising or ridiculing the policy.
>>>>
>>>> John Denham MP
>>>> Minister for police and crime reduction
>>>
>>> That is really interesting! The Minister for Police can't find
>>> any evidence of such a list or guidelines, even though the
>>> officers believe it exists and we saw articles about the
>>> proposals a few years ago. Maybe they never made it past the
>>> proposal stage, yet still linger in the popular consciousness.
>>
>> You must be unfamiliar with British political-speak.
>> What the above says is: "Yes, there is such a list of banned
>> words and terms -- but we don't call it that, and we would not
>> present using words or terms from the list as the charge, when
>> taking disciplinary action against officers who use them".
>
> So, Mark, enlighten me. What if -- just supposing -- what I said
> really was true, and there was no list of forbidden terms, and
> the Minister wanted the public and the officers to know that.
> What would he have said differently in that case from what he did
> say?
Replace:
"The Metropolitan police has issued sensible advice on the way in
which different ethnic groups describe themselves or prefer to be
described. It offers guidance to officers on appropriate
terminology"
with:
"",
and you're almost there.
Add a sentence containing the phrase "need to be aware of" or
"important to be aware of", and the job's a good 'un.
In an office-politics-ridden organisation like the Met, 'advice' is
'orders'. Them as don't follow 'advice' stay at the bottom of the
ladder.
--
Mark Wallace
-----------------------------------------------------
For the intelligent approach to nasty humour, visit:
The Anglo-American Humour (humor) Site
http://humorpages.virtualave.net/mainmenu.htm
-----------------------------------------------------
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Dick Gregory's glorious autobiography was entitled "nigger" (yes,
> with a small "n")
Huh? My (1965, first printing) paperback copy has a handwritten
"nigger" on the cover, but the spine and title page say "NIGGER" and
the heading of each left hand page says "Nigger". I don't think that
there was any implication that the actual title of the book was to
have other than standard capitalization.
> - and the dedication read (IIRC - the book was one of the many I
> lost in the flood): "Dear Mom: any time you hear someone use the
> word 'nigger', just remember - they are advertising my book"!
Dear Momma--Wherever you are, if ever you hear the word "nigger"
again, remember they are advertising my book.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Feeling good about government is like
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |looking on the bright side of any
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |catastrophe. When you quit looking
|on the bright side, the catastrophe
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |is still there.
(650)857-7572 | P.J. O'Rourke
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Thu, 16 May 2002, in article <abvdfa$iu4$1...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>,
> Joona I Palaste (Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi>) wrote
>
> >(Since when did women became a minority, though?)
>
> In the western world, in the last couple of generations. 106 males
> are born for every 100 females. In the past, this unnatural
> discrepancy was more than compensated for by wars (just about the
> only justification for such boy-hobbies, to my mind). More
> recently, there has been no such adjustment - other than, perhaps,
> dangerous drink-drivers, who are fractionally more likely to kill
> their(male)selves than their random innocent victims
According to the 2000 census, the US is 50.9% female. 51.7% of adults
(18 or over) are female. Under 18, the country is 48.6% female, only
1% over your 1.06:1 ratio.
A table of males per hundred females can be found at
http://factfinder.census.gov/bf/_lang=en_vt_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_GCTP5_US9_geo_id=01000US.html
The numbers range from a high of 107.6 (Alaskan adults) to a low of
86.1 (DC adults). Colorado adults are precisely balanced, at 100.0.
> - who, in any case, would have a 1.06:1 chance of being male before
> the car reached them...
I don't think that one works. If the victims are selected uniformly
from the population, then removing them shouldn't change the
proportion in the population.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Now and then an innocent man is sent
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |to the legislature.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 | Kim Hubbard
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>> And the least gullible favour French pique-nique
>
>You're mixing terms, John. Pequenino is the origin of
>"pickaninny" or "picaninny". Picnic has origins in
>pique-nique. Pickninny was once a commonly heard term for
>a small, black child.
And around here "PK" used to refer to an outhouse loo, which was derived from
the Fanagalo term "piccanin kaya", meaning "little house", from Portuguese
"peqenao" (sp?) meaning small, and Zulu "ikhaya", meaning "home".
Fanagalo was, as I mentioned in another thread, the miners' pidgin.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/steve.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Mickwick
>Please forgive me for a moment while I raise my voice. THERE WAS NO MOB.
Wot? No paedogeddon?
--
Mickwick
Phil C.
> (Just because a term originates in Afro-American speech, though,
doesn't
> mean it's racist. In fact, one could claim that a term which
originated
> in that manner couldn't possibly be anti-black racist; it could be
> anti-white racist, such as "honky", but which of us would have the
right
> to take exception to terms such as that?)
Or it could just be a perfectly harmless, useful term that enriches the
language, such as "jazz" or (I think) "jive".
--
Phil C.
_______________________________
philandwoody"at"meem"dot"freeserve"dot"co"dot"uk
Phil C.
> On Thu, 16 May 2002, in article <abvuod$n11$2...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk>,
> Phil C. (Phil C. <nob...@nowhere.co.uk>) wrote
>
> >For what it's worth, my bowdlerised MW suggests that nitty-gritty
comes
> >from "orig. black scatological slang: rhyming euphemism". So while
there
> >are no grounds for a nitty-gritty racism ban, there are grounds for
(I
> >can't say it, I can't say it) a nitty-gritty dirt ban.
>
> So what you aren't saying, aren't saying, is that "nitty-gritty" means
> "shitty"?
>
> So where did it acquire the meaning - ascribed to it from the first
> noted reference - of "down to basics"?
Well, I'm just the messenger but it sounds feasible - much like "muck
and nettles" in Brit usage. The image would be the seamy, real underside
of the "nice" polite, dissembling world. Ditto "Lady Muck".
I once heard a very concise definition of the difference between history
and heritage - shit.
AlbertPeasemarch
> > Correct me if my memory has failed me here, but was not the mob
> > excited by a reference to the doctor in a newspaper? Something
> > like "so-and-so, a paediatrician, has opened offices at ---"?
>
I remember seeing this on the news, and, as I remember it, she had a
sign outside her house saying "paediatrician". Did she have no shame?
Albert Peasemarch.
Dr Robin Bignall
I just object to the principle of involving children who are much too
young to understand the issues, or even the meaning of the words they
mindlessly chant, in such situations. I do not particularly care about
the motivations of the parents, be they fuelled by religious fervour
or just plain stupidity. What chance do those children have of growing
up as balanced individuals? Not a lot, in my opinion. Being encouraged
from an early age to hurl abuse, bricks or Molotov Cocktails at those
you have been indoctrinated to hate cannot be a Good Thing.
--
wrmst rgrds
RB...(docrobi...@ntlworld.com)
Dr Robin Bignall
<masonbar...@aol.com> wrote:
>On Thu, 16 May 2002 23:18:01 +0100, Molly
><nos...@mockfords.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
[..]
>HARRUMPH!
>
>Grits is porridge made from corn meal eaten with butter, salt and
>pepper. Everybody in the South eats it, pretty much. I suppose it
>would fill the place of hashbrowned potatoes in the standard
>bacon-and-eggs breakfast eaten in other parts of the country.
>
>It is plain fare, but eaten by rich and poor alike. Again, I would
>use potatoes as an analogy.
>
And mighty nice it is, too.
But I once looked up what it was and how it was made before it gets to
the supermarket in neat, little packets.
They collect the corn when it is hard enough to be used as buckshot,
and boil or steep it in a strong solution of sodium hydroxide (the
stuff you use to clean your drains) for some days.
I didn't read beyond there. I decided simply to close my eyes and
enjoy it. I've not noticed it on sale in even large supermarkets in
the UK, but I'm sure it's available from somewhere. (Harrods?)
--
wrmst rgrds
RB...(docrobi...@ntlworld.com)
meirman
<bass.a...@ntlworld.com> posted:
>Eric Walker wrote:
>>
>> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer read?
>
>Non UK readers may not have heard about the undereducated nutters, a
>couple of years ago, who trashed a doctor's home in South Wales because
>her profession was given as "Paediatrician".
What did the vandal think it meant?
s/ meirman If you are emailing me please
say if you are posting the same response.
Born west of Pittsburgh Pa. 10 years
Indianapolis, 7 years
Chicago, 6 years
Brooklyn NY 12 years
Baltimore 17 years
Mark Wallace
I agree. That's why I discounted them with 'well-intentioned,
etc.'. The way the thread has gone, though, has the paedophiles as
the *target* of the mobs, along with the well-intentioned (etc.)
Jews (etc.).
Donna Richoux
> In alt.english.usage on Thu, 16 May 2002 09:08:31 +0100 david56
> <bass.a...@ntlworld.com> posted:
>
> >Eric Walker wrote:
> >>
> >> Oklahoma lynch mobs, my ass. Can no one any longer read?
> >
> >Non UK readers may not have heard about the undereducated nutters, a
> >couple of years ago, who trashed a doctor's home in South Wales because
> >her profession was given as "Paediatrician".
>
> What did the vandal think it meant?
Paedo, paedophile. As Don pointed out, there had been an active
anti-paedo campaign going on, instigated by the tabloids.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
John Dean
"Dr Robin Bignall" <docr...@red.sylvania> wrote in message
news:886aeu0sgl51p7eji...@4ax.com...
It's not even a good thing.
Mike Stevens
> "Joona I Palaste" <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
> news:ac05va$bu6$3...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi...
> > Mike Stevens <mike...@which.net> scribbled the following
> > on alt.usage.english:
> > > Sadly the USA contains a fair number of people who take
> to account of
> > > anything that happened outside the USA, because to them
> such places
> > > don't really exist. I hope that doesn't give any
> offence to anyone in
> > > this group.
> >
> > ITYM "take no account"?
Indeed.
> Also, please inform the poster that Oklahoma is in the USA.
> I have never been in Oklahoma, but I am assured that it
> exists and is still here.
The point I was trying to make, and obviously didn't succeed, was that
the people who believe in the "Oklahoma lynch mobs" derivation my well
be USAians who reject the other derivations because the know Oklahoma
exists but doubt the existence of France, England etc. They probably
also have little concept of any date before the Declaration of
Independence.
--
Mike Stevens, nb Felis Catus II
I didn't believe in re-incarnation last time, either.
Off-list replies, please, to michael...@which.net
Web site http://www.mike-stevens.co.uk
Donna Richoux
> wooster <mrberti...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Letters from the London Guardian newspaper this morning:
> >
> > You say I was reproached by a Metropolitan police training officer at
> > the Police Federation conference for using a banned phrase which - if
> > used by officers - would, it was claimed, lead to disciplinary action
> > (Why nitty gritty has been ruled a no-no in the police lexicon, May
> > 15).
> >
> > I have checked this claim. It is untrue. There is no list of banned
> > words. Nor can I find any evidence that the phrase has been banned or
> > established as having racist connotations. The Metropolitan police has
> > issued sensible advice on the way in which different ethnic groups
> > describe themselves or prefer to be described. It offers guidance to
> > officers on appropriate terminology, which does not include the
> > phrase. [snip]
>
> > John Denham MP
> > Minister for police and crime reduction
>
> That is really interesting! The Minister for Police can't find any
> evidence of such a list or guidelines, even though the officers believe
> it exists and we saw articles about the proposals a few years ago. Maybe
> they never made it past the proposal stage, yet still linger in the
> popular consciousness.
>
> The Guardian had a related article, too, which explained the "good egg"
> theory:
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4413720,00.html
The saga continues in the Guardian's letter column today. One of the
policemen involved insists that officers *have* been disciplined for use
of these words. Plus, two editors of noted slang dictionaries (Partridge
and Cassell's) weigh in, on the side of debunking the slave story.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4415222,00.html
May 17, 2002
(How exciting to be in the middle of a breaking news story.)
Dave Fawthrop
Hash: SHA1
"Donna Richoux" <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote in message
news:1fcccmr.t7y1md1ysfuaqN%tr...@euronet.nl...
| Paedo, paedophile. As Don pointed out, there had been an active
| anti-paedo campaign going on, instigated by the tabloids.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
paedo: child, boy SOED
I have not noticed any anti child or anti boy campaign in the tabloids.
Please give examples and URLs.
Or apologise for making a grossly untrue statement.
<from uk.culture.language.english>
- --
Dave Fawthrop <da...@hyphenologist.co.uk> Killfile and Anti Troll FAQs
at http://www.hyphenologist.co.uk/killfile. The Trolls hate the FAQs,
this sig, and me. They also forge my posts wholesale, and follow up
with baseless accusations. My posts are PGP signed. PK 0x765AB578
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=yFuk
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Dave Fawthrop
Hash: SHA1
"Donna Richoux" <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote in message
news:1fccixc.mb2pgi1fjec1sN%tr...@euronet.nl...
| > That is really interesting! The Minister for Police
No such thing as a Minister for Police
- --
Dave Fawthrop <da...@hyphenologist.co.uk>
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Rick Kitchen
> On Thu, 16 May 2002, in article <abvuod$n11$2...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk>,
> Phil C. (Phil C. <nob...@nowhere.co.uk>) wrote
>
> >For what it's worth, my bowdlerised MW suggests that nitty-gritty comes
> >from "orig. black scatological slang: rhyming euphemism". So while there
> >are no grounds for a nitty-gritty racism ban, there are grounds for (I
> >can't say it, I can't say it) a nitty-gritty dirt ban.
>
> So what you aren't saying, aren't saying, is that "nitty-gritty" means
> "shitty"?
I think it was more like fornication.
> So where did it acquire the meaning - ascribed to it from the first
> noted reference - of "down to basics"?
"Get down and dirty".
Rick Kitchen
meirman
Walker" <ewa...@owlcroft.com> posted:
>On 16 May 2002 09:20:58 GMT, Joona I Palaste wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>>Even then the mob should have shown a modicum of common sense.
>
>Mob . . . common sense . . . I'm not sure those terms can
>comfortably reside in the same clause.
The only think my ancient history teacher in the 9th grade said that
was off the curriculum. Never be a part of a mob. He wanted us to
remember it and indeed it is the only sentence I specifically remember
from the class. I wouldn't have anyhow.
meirman
<bass.a...@ntlworld.com> posted:
>There is a minor skirmish underway in the UK today relating to
>"nitty-gritty". To me, this has a figurative meaning (the essence or
>basic part of something) but I have no memory of ever hearing any
>derivation.
>
>A government minster was addressing the Police Federation (a sort of
>trade union) and said it was "time to get down to the nitty-gritty" when
>talking about police training. He was barracked for using racist
>language - Plod is apparently banned from the phrase.
>
>I had no idea why. My wife said she'd heard that the term referred to
>slave traders' black mistresses. All sorts of derivations have now been
>trotted out but no apparently no evidence can be found for the phrase
>existing any earlier than 1963 - this "proves" to the PC (Politically
Perhaps they are relying on rock music as their only source. It goes
back before I was born in 47. Probably long before I was born. And
it was used in the white world in the 50's. That Time was talking
about blacks when they first used it means nothing to me.
Time magazine may have been the first source people can find, but they
go out of their way to use slang. I'm not swayed.
I know about a lot or race based terms but I've never heard this
mentioned.
Molly
>language, such as "jazz" or (I think) "jive".
And "rock and roll"...
--
Molly
Spammers are like tapeworms: they leech the life from the Internet and
provide nothing of benefit in return. (Patricia A. Shaffer)
Molly
Kirshenbaum (Evan Kirshenbaum <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com>) wrote
>Molly <nos...@mockfords.clara.co.uk> writes:
>
>> Dick Gregory's glorious autobiography was entitled "nigger" (yes,
>> with a small "n")
>
>Huh? My (1965, first printing) paperback copy has a handwritten
>"nigger" on the cover, but the spine and title page say "NIGGER" and
>the heading of each left hand page says "Nigger". I don't think that
>there was any implication that the actual title of the book was to
>have other than standard capitalization.
My hardback copy had a small "n" on both front cover and spine, and on
the title page as well; I can't remember about page headings, though.
Peter J Ross
removed the following benign growth from Dave Fawthrop:
> "Donna Richoux" <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote in message
> news:1fccixc.mb2pgi1fjec1sN%tr...@euronet.nl...
>
> | > That is really interesting! The Minister for Police
>
> No such thing as a Minister for Police
http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/hmgdept.htm
<quote>
Home Office
SECRETARY OF STATE
Rt Hon David Blunkett MP
MINISTERS OF STATE
Minister for Police, Courts and Drugs - Rt Hon John Denham MP
Minister for Prisons - Rt Hon Keith Bradley MP
Minister for Asylum and Immigration - Rt Hon Lord Rooker
</quote>
PJR :-)
Simon R. Hughes
> Spammers are like tapeworms: they leech the life from the Internet and
> provide nothing of benefit in return. (Patricia A. Shaffer)
Actually, I've never heard of tapeworms doing that.
--
Simon R. Hughes
<!-- signature-challenged -->
Mark Wallace
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
<snip>
> Dave Fawthrop <da...@hyphenologist.co.uk> Killfile and Anti Troll
> FAQs at http://www.hyphenologist.co.uk/killfile. The Trolls hate
> the FAQs, this sig, and me. They also forge my posts wholesale,
> and follow up with baseless accusations. My posts are PGP signed.
> PK 0x765AB578
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.8 for non-commercial use
> <http://www.pgp.com>
>
> iQA/AwUBPOVbDJ53Yvp2WrV4EQJjDwCggtbdkCIGYcxnO/TIF9JVNWuYtnkAnjqS
> yS/rGIvq84ZsEtcvfijZoLGw
> =yFuk
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
A very wise man.
--
Begin PCP Signature...
ecallaW kraM
...End PCP Signature
Donna Richoux
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> "Donna Richoux" <tr...@euronet.nl> wrote in message
> news:1fcccmr.t7y1md1ysfuaqN%tr...@euronet.nl...
> | Paedo, paedophile. As Don pointed out, there had been an active
> | anti-paedo campaign going on, instigated by the tabloids.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> paedo: child, boy SOED
> I have not noticed any anti child or anti boy campaign in the tabloids.
> Please give examples and URLs.
Are you aware that we are speaking of an event from 2000? Did you read
the article I mentioned? It is
From: don-a...@freeuk.com (Don Aitken)
Newsgroups:
alt.english.usage,alt.usage.english,uk.culture.language.english
Subject: Re: paedo, the truth: [WAS: nitty-gritty]
Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 19:44:06 GMT
Message-ID: <3ce4064c...@news.freeuk.net>
If all the dates and names in there are not sufficient for you to locate
what you need to know, I'll be surprised but I will assist you in the
search.
> Or apologise for making a grossly untrue statement.
>
> <from uk.culture.language.english>
Does that peremptory tone win friends and influence people at
uk.culture.language.english?
--
Donna Richoux
Evan Kirshenbaum
> You're mixing terms, John. Pequenino is the origin of
> "pickaninny" or "picaninny". Picnic has origins in
> pique-nique. Pickninny was once a commonly heard term for
> a small, black child.
And, spelled "pikinini", it became the neutral word for "child",
regardless of race, in Tok Pisin.
For more examples of this wonderful, almost understandable language,
check out the news at
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/tokpisin/news/
For example,
Palimen oa White Haus ibin tok em ibin mekim olgeta samting long
bekim sampela tok lukaut ibin kamap olsem bai igat sampela kain
bagarap bai kamap long America-em oli bin kisim long las-yar
pastaim long namba 11 de blong mun Septemba.
Dispela toktok ibin kamap bihainim tok-stret blong President Bush
ibin tokaut long aste,olsem sampela pipol ibin tokim em pastaim
long ol dispela bagarap ibin kamap olsem lain blong Osama bin
Laden bai inap long "hjackim"wanpela pasindia balus blong
America,na mekim gavaman i putim tok lukaut igo long ol Federal
agensi na ino ol pipol.
Dispela tokaut ibin putim White Haus i defendim em yet long traim
long tok-klia olsem wanen na oli no kamapim strongpela wok
sekuriti,na tu oli bin nap long toksave kuik igo long ol pipol.
Tasol,mausman blong White Haus,Ari Fleischer ibin tok dispela
tingting poret blong hijeckim ol balus i stat long kamapim
narakain tingting stat long Septemba 11 heve ikam inap nau.(
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/tokpisin/news/s557566.htm
(Although the spelling seems to be inconsistent. "Bilong", for
example, is consistently "blong" in several of the articles.)
Tok Pisin is a great example of a language that incorporated words
from another language without realizing that they were emotionally
charged. "Pikinini" is one such. The above story contains another:
"bagarap" (accident, mistake) comes from "bugger up".
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |ActiveX is pretty harmless anyway.
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |It can't affect you unless you
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |install Windows, and who would be
|foolish enough to do that?
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Peter Moylan
(650)857-7572