Pat him on the po-po
Brian J Goggin
On this day (14 November) in 1952, the first British (pop music)
chart, the Top Ten, was broadcast by the BBC.
At No 5 was a song by Guy Mitchell, purporting to be sung by a father
delighting in his newly-arrived son. The chorus seems to be "Feet up,
pat him on the po-po, let's hear him laugh. Ha ha ha ha".
What is a po-po? Is (or was) the word used anywhere?
What? You want the full top ten? OK ....
10 Vera Lynn "Auf Wiedersehn Sweetheart"
9 Vera Lynn "Homecoming Waltz"
8 Doris Day and Frankie Laine "Sugarbush"
7 Frankie Laine "High Noon"
6 Rosemary Clooney "Half as Much"
5 Guy Mitchell "Feet up"
4 Bing Crosby "The Isle of Innisfree"
3 Nat King Cole "Somewhere along the way"
2 Jo Stafford "You belong to me"
1 Al Martino "Here in my Heart"
Isn't Irish radio wonderful?
bjg
John Nurick
On Fri, 14 Nov 1997 22:51:41 GMT, b...@wordwrights.ie (Brian J
Goggin) wrote:
[...]
>a song by Guy Mitchell, purporting to be sung by a father
>delighting in his newly-arrived son. The chorus seems to be "Feet up,
>pat him on the po-po, let's hear him laugh. Ha ha ha ha".
>What is a po-po? Is (or was) the word used anywhere?
At first I read "...*put* him on the po-po", and wondered why
you needed to ask.
Assuming it is "pat", could this be metonymy? If so, it's either
the very rare "container for the thing containing", or, more
likely, a subset of the well-known "sat-upon for the sitter",
namely "sat-upon for the sit-upon".
John
I dislocated my e-mail address, and the doctor says it will be
six months before I can see a specialist.
KB (see signature)
In article <01bcf1dd$8fc8cfe0$6a6e...@cappy.clemson>, "O&W"
<neithe...@norclemson.campus.mci.net> wrote:
> Means 'pat him on the bottom.' I remember the song, BTW.
> --
>
> > At No 5 was a song by Guy Mitchell, purporting to be sung by a father
> > delighting in his newly-arrived son. The chorus seems to be "Feet up,
> > pat him on the po-po, let's hear him laugh. Ha ha ha ha".
As I rather vaguely recall, Po is German and/or Yiddish for buttocks.
Po-Po is a diminutive of Po. I first heard it used by a Jewish woman who
excaped Germany in the 1940s. She would use it with children in the same
affectionate tone of voice that others might use for "tuchus" or
"tushie". "Oh dear. Did you fall down and hurt your Po Po?"
--
Kathy Brunetti
The "From" address is a fake, courtesy of my ISP. Here's a real one--remove capital letters to reply. kbr...@ns.REMOVE-TO-REPLY.net
O&W
Means 'pat him on the bottom.' I remember the song, BTW.
--
More than you ever wanted tio know!
Brian J Goggin <b...@wordwrights.ie> wrote in article
<346cd316....@news.indigo.ie>...
Reinhold Aman
On Sun, 16 Nov 1997 11:24:41 -0500, Robert Lieblich
<lieb...@erols.com> wrote:
> >"Popo" is the nickname for the sacred mountain Popocatepetl. It is also
> >(pronounced slowly) an adjective describing impoverished or unfortunate
> >persons, as in "Popo Reinhold Aman -- insufficiently respected among the
> >AUEers."
Now, now, Mr. Lieblich, that wasn't very _lieblich_ of you to mock me
*and* the po' Negroes. Ah sho' be a po' dude, you know, not bein' one
o' dem lawyers, but not 'cause, you know, dem AUE dudes don' respeck me
none.
Schmuckette Kahn's brilliant observation:
> Translation into English: "Nyah, nyah, I know and I won't tell. Nyah,
> nyah!" Sixty-one years old going on eight....
Hint #1:
"Popo" is to "Arschloch" as Barbara Willette is to Mimi Kahn.
Hint #2:
Think Latin.
> I may have to take a few people out of my killfiles. I'm missing all
> the fun.
Right, all the fun of seeing yourself documented and described as a
transparently stupid broad without any purpose in life -- but without
having to wait for your buddies' forwarded postings.
--
Reinhold Aman, ---> Ph.D. <---
MALEDICTA: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression
P.O. Box 14123
Santa Rosa, CA 95402-6123, USA
------------------------------------
http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/
Mirror site in Dublin, Ireland, at:
http://www.ucd.ie/~artspgs/mal/
Lee Lester
KBAs I rather vaguely recall, Po is German and/or Yiddish for buttocks.
It is also used for a chamber pot, a container for urine or faeces that
is used by toddlers, or, many years, ago, in the days of outside
toilets, was placed under or near a bed for nightime use by adults. Thus
'Sit the child on the po.'
I assume it was a shortening of pottie which was in itself a
shortening of chamber pottie.
Robert Lieblich
Reinhold Aman wrote:
>
> Brian J Goggin wrote:
>
> > At No 5 was a song by Guy Mitchell, purporting to be sung by a father
> > delighting in his newly-arrived son. The chorus seems to be "Feet up,
> > pat him on the po-po, let's hear him laugh. Ha ha ha ha".
> >
>
> etymology, but as I have no fans in AUE-land (sniff-sniff & sob-sob),
> I'd rather wait for the language mavens and amateurs to post their
> opinions. Heh-heh.
"Popo" is the nickname for the sacred mountain Popocatepetl. It is also
(pronounced slowly) an adjective describing impoverished or unfortunate
persons, as in "Popo Reinhold Aman -- insufficiently respected among the
AUEers." It is also the Etruscan vocative for the Bishop of Rome,
frequently repeated several times in common usage.
I suspect there are other uses but am unaware of them.
Bob Lieblich
Robert Lieblich
Reinhold Aman wrote:
<snip>
> Now, now, Mr. Lieblich, that wasn't very _lieblich_ of you to mock me
> *and* the po' Negroes. Ah sho' be a po' dude, you know, not bein' one
> o' dem lawyers, but not 'cause, you know, dem AUE dudes don' respeck me
> none.
Actually, I was thinking of the Louisiana version of the sub sandwich,
known as the Po' Boy, whose name, I think, derives from Cajun dialect.
And it is a sorry day when an expression of sympathy is taken as
mocking.
Bob Lieblich
RReming327
In article <97111605...@guildnet.org>, lee.l...@guildnet.org (Lee
Lester) pontificating prodigiously per po-po:
>It is also used for a chamber pot, a container for urine or faeces that
>is used by toddlers, or, many years, ago, in the days of outside
>toilets, was placed under or near a bed for nightime use by adults. Thus
>'Sit the child on the po.'
...which of course derives from the river in northern Italy, where mothers
have been dipping their infants' bottoms, as well as their own, since
antiquity.
After the Roman defeat by Hannibal at the river Po, captured Roman troops
were required to haul away, among other remains, baskets of elephant
dumplings. When they inquired as to where they were to dispose of the
prodigious pachyderm poop, a Carthegenian guard jerked a thumb and said
"Po!" The river thus gained a rather unsavory reputation as the only
fitting receptical for exeptionally large excreta, as well as more mundane
nastiness of all kinds. Indeed, any retainer of reeking refuse became
dubbed the "Po", first by Roman veterans and then, by diffusion, throughout
the civilized world.
The Gauls, with their characteristic flair for the contumacious vernacular
twist, quickly appropriated the word "po" to refer to the anatomical source
of stinkiness. Tacitus records the habit of the wilder wildmen of the north
as "arranging themselves in a curious formation with their bare backsides
towards the particular legion which was the object of their taunts, thus
they would bend over while chanting "Po, Po, Po!" and gesticulating most
rudely, much to the amusement of the Roman officers and consternation of
the Breton mercenaries."
English historians have proposed that the Picts picked up this tactic and
used the posture to questionable advantage against their foes. Later, the
Scots, true to their national character, added their own, dare I say,
embellishment dispensing with execration in favor of actual excretion. The
Normans, true to their national character in mistaking most of what the
Scots did, misperceived this taunt as indicating extreme fear on the part
of the clan formations and frequently broke ranks either toward or away
from the enemy, depending on the prevailing wind-- thereby accomplishing a
small tactical advantage for the Scots (English military scholars are
divided on this, some saying that, like the Welsh and the Irish, the Scots
were full of it anyway and behaved thus at any gathering of three or more).
At any rate, the posture became a common enough practice in highland
warfare to feature prominently in the 1995 historical film "Braveheart"
(directed by an Australian as English historians are quick to point out).
In its continental permutations "Po" has appeared in the German "po-po"
which later lapsed into the more modern and familiar English "poo-poo"
first recorded in the chronicles of the Venerable Bede during his
pilgrimage to the eternal city; who, upon approaching the papal seat,
downwind, in the heat of an Italian summer, remarked rather sharply
concerning the more noseworthy first impressions of the glory that was
Rome. Sadly, the reaction of the Pontiff, if there was one, is unrecorded.
RRemington
___________________________________________________
Johnson: Well, we had a good talk.
Boswell: Yes, Sir; you tossed and gored several persons.
Reinhold Aman
John Davies wrote:
>
> In article <346cd316....@news.indigo.ie>, Brian J Goggin
> <b...@wordwrights.ie> writes
> >On this day (14 November) in 1952, the first British (pop music)
> >chart, the Top Ten, was broadcast by the BBC.
> >
> >delighting in his newly-arrived son. The chorus seems to be "Feet up,
> >pat him on the po-po, let's hear him laugh. Ha ha ha ha".
> >
> >What is a po-po? Is (or was) the word used anywhere?
>
> equivalent to British "bum". It is more often shortened to "Po". My one
> and only German dictionary doesn't give an etymology, but I always
> assumed that it was related to "posterior". It has nothing to do with
> chamber pots; the English "po" comes from French "pot de chambre" (which
> in German is "Nachttopf").
Only a few of the AUEers came close to the meaning, usage and etymology
of _Popo_. Here is the rest of the story.
_Popo_ is a German euphemism and endearing term for the behind, the
buttocks. It is used primarily with and by children but also by adults,
such as by lovers or in jocular contexts. The closest equivalent in U.S.
English is _tushie_, a diminutive of Yiddish _tokhes_ (also spelled
_toches_; see below).
_Popo_ is usually stressed on the second syllable (der Popó). It is
derived from the Latin _podex_ ("the behind, posterior"). _Popo_ is a
reduplication of _po-_, a feature common in children's terms (goo-goo,
dumb-dumb, wee-wee). The short version, _Po_, is used slightly less
frequently than _Popo_.
This word is used throughout Germany, Austria, Switzerland,
Luxemburg, and in other German-speaking regions.
A euphemism for this German euphemism is also common, _die vier
Buchstaben_ ("the four letters").
As to _tokhes_ (the correct scholarly transliteration of the
Yiddish word), one also finds the popular _toches_, where _kh_ and _ch_
represent the ach-sound of German _Bach_ or Scots _loch_. However, many
wrong, illiterate variants exist, such as "tukis, tokes, tuchis, tockes,
tuckes," not only in popular print media but also in pseudo-scholarly
works about Yiddish, such as Leo Rosten's _The Joys of Yiddish_ and
Rabbi Sidney Jacobs's 1982 _The Jewish Word Book_. Jacobs's romanized
writing system of Yiddish words outdoes the amateurish one by Rosten; he
uses such outlandish spellings as "tuhches, tuhchuhs, tawches."
--
Reinhold Aman, Editor
Evan Kirshenbaum
Mark_S...@notpartofmyaddress.csgi.com (Mark Schaefer) writes:
> Further, since the Hebrew alphabet, even when used for Yiddish, has no
> vowels,
This is incorrect. When writing words other than (some of) those that
came from Hebrew, Yiddish is written completely alphabetically,
several of the Hebrew letters having become vowels. Aleph stands for
/a/ or /O/ depending on the vowel symbol which is (mandatorily)
written below it. (Without a vowel mark, it is a silent consonant.)
Vav is /u/, vav yud is /Oi/. (Two vavs are /v/.) Yud is /I/ (or
/j/). Two yuds are /eI/. Ayin is /E/.
> one must by necessity use transliterations that approximate
> pronunciation since often no written evidence exists for the
> original sound. Based on the pronunciations I have observed,
> 'tuhches, tuhchuhs, and tawches' would not be beyond reason. If I
> had to make a "correct scholarly" rendition it would be [tUx@s].
I suspect that there may well be regional variation in pronunciation,
as Yiddish branched into several main dialects. I don't have a
dictionary handy, so I can't tell how the word is spelled. My guess
would be that it's probably /tOxEs/. In my family, in English, it was
[tUxIs].
However it is spelled, there is a transcription into latin letters,
standardized, at least for scholarly work, by YIVO (the Institute for
Jewish Research) in, I believe, the 1950s. Of course, most Yiddish
words that made their way into English had done so long before that,
and different people made different guesses at how to best indicate
the pronunciation to English speakers.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Those who would give up essential
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |Liberty, to purchase a little
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |temporary Safety, deserve neither
|Liberty nor Safety.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Benjamin Franklin
(650)857-7572
Reinhold Aman
Mimi Kahn wrote:
> On 15 Nov 1997 15:50:00 GMT, "O&W"
> <neithe...@norclemson.campus.mci.net> wrote:
>
> >Means 'pat him on the bottom.' I remember the song, BTW.
>
> coconut cream.
>
> I don't, however, think that's what was meant. <--- !
Madam Kahn doesn't, however, think that's what was meant. What a
stilted, pretentious, ostentatious sentence! And this in AUE.
_Popo_ exists in other languages, too. In Hawaiian it means "rot," and
with two [o:], "ball," "bunch" and "tomorrow" -- but who gives a rat's
ass? Only an immature (coco)nut like Mimi would post such blather in
this group.
--
Reinhold Aman, Editor