Beazel
Michael Zeleny
place between the eponymous protagonist embarking on an ersatz hobo
adventure, the girl twisting his arm to tag along, and Mr. Burrows,
his butler:
Sullivan: Why don't you go back with the car? You look about as
much like a boy as Mae West.
The Girl: All right, they'll think I'm your frail.
Burrows: I believe it's called a "beazel," miss, if memory serves.
Alas, my memory fails to serve. Any words of wisdom regarding the term?
cordially
Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu
"In this world, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well,
for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. And you may quote me.
Ben Zimmer
Michael Zeleny wrote:
>
> In Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, the following exchange takes
> place between the eponymous protagonist embarking on an ersatz hobo
> adventure, the girl twisting his arm to tag along, and Mr. Burrows,
> his butler:
>
> Sullivan: Why don't you go back with the car? You look about as
> much like a boy as Mae West.
> The Girl: All right, they'll think I'm your frail.
> Burrows: I believe it's called a "beazel," miss, if memory serves.
>
> Alas, my memory fails to serve. Any words of wisdom regarding the term?
One movie site (http://www.filmsite.org/sull2.html) glosses "frail" and
"beazle" as "female companion".
Dunno about "beazle" (I wouldn't put it past Sturges to make up the
word-- remember Ignatz Ratzkywatzky?), but here's the OED entry for
"frail":
----------------
frail, n3
A woman.
1908 H. GREEN Maison de Shine 50 Aw, the frails is all the same... A
guy comes along and shoots that old con about how he's the grandest
thing on earth, an' the wisest of 'em fall. 1926 Amer. Speech I. 462/1
The Apollo Theater in London prints the following glossary of slang in
its program as a guide to ‘Is Zat So?’ Dame, Frail,..Girl. 1931 E.
LINKLATER Juan in Amer. II. xvi. 177 Bullets whistling through the air
to..threaten widowhood for the ravished frail. 1945 P. CHEYNEY I'll Say
she Does v. 141 She's a swell dish--a lovely piece of frail. 1970 K.
PLATT Pushbutton Butterfly (1971) iv. 36 A smaller soggy shape was
huddled behind him... An Angel and his frail challenging another night.
----------------
--Ben
Michael Zeleny
"Frail" is no mystery:
Folks here's a story 'bout Minnie the Moocher,
She was a red hot hoochie-coocher,
She was the roughest, toughest frail,
But Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.
-- Cab Calloway
Anyone for beazle/beazel?
Matti Lamprhey
> In Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, the following exchange takes
> place between the eponymous protagonist embarking on an ersatz hobo
> adventure, the girl twisting his arm to tag along, and Mr. Burrows,
> his butler:
>
> Sullivan: Why don't you go back with the car? You look about as
> much like a boy as Mae West.
> The Girl: All right, they'll think I'm your frail.
> Burrows: I believe it's called a "beazel," miss, if memory serves.
>
> Alas, my memory fails to serve. Any words of wisdom regarding the term?
Well I'm dumbfounded. "Beazel" is a reasonably familiar word to me, but I
don't find it in my huge New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. It's a
mildly and non-specifically derogatory term for a girl or young woman. A
typical usage might be one of the Ugly Sisters saying "Cinderella -- have
you ironed my gown yet? Are you there? Where is the beazel?"
Matti
posting from alt.english.usage
John Dean
Matti Lamprhey <matti-...@totally-official.com> wrote in message
news:9n7akq$5k6sp$3...@ID-103223.news.dfncis.de...
vocabulary of generous proportions. Partridge's DoS 8th edition says
'beazel. A girl since ca. 1930 (P.G. Wodehouse. An arbitrary formation -
prob. euph. for bitch)'
I wonder if there is a connection with 'besom' (pron. BEE-zum) which is an
old word for a broom ('swepe thy soul clene wyth the besome of the drede of
God' - useful advice, no?) but is also used for (SOED 3rd) ''a low woman''
or, as my Mother used it, 'a hussy', a woman 'no better than she ought to
be'.
And, oh, the joys of English! My browsing has introduced me to 'bezzle' - to
'make away with the property of others'. So now 'bezzle' and 'embezzle' can
join 'flammable' and 'inflammable' & all the others......
--
John Dean -- Oxford
I am anti-spammed -- defrag me to reply
Ben Zimmer
John Dean wrote:
>
> Matti Lamprhey <matti-...@totally-official.com> wrote in message
> news:9n7akq$5k6sp$3...@ID-103223.news.dfncis.de...
> > "Michael Zeleny" <zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu> wrote...
> > > In Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, the following exchange takes
> > > place between the eponymous protagonist embarking on an ersatz hobo
> > > adventure, the girl twisting his arm to tag along, and Mr. Burrows,
> > > his butler:
> > >
> > > Sullivan: Why don't you go back with the car? You look about as
> > > much like a boy as Mae West.
> > > The Girl: All right, they'll think I'm your frail.
> > > Burrows: I believe it's called a "beazel," miss, if memory serves.
> > >
> > > Alas, my memory fails to serve. Any words of wisdom regarding the term?
> >
> > Well I'm dumbfounded. "Beazel" is a reasonably familiar word to me, but I
> > don't find it in my huge New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. It's a
> > mildly and non-specifically derogatory term for a girl or young woman. A
> > typical usage might be one of the Ugly Sisters saying "Cinderella -- have
> > you ironed my gown yet? Are you there? Where is the beazel?"
> >
> 'Beazel' was unknown to me and, I'm not ashamed to say, I have a slang
> vocabulary of generous proportions. Partridge's DoS 8th edition says
> 'beazel. A girl since ca. 1930 (P.G. Wodehouse. An arbitrary formation -
> prob. euph. for bitch)'
Fascinating. Anyone know of other "euphemisms" along these lines? I
never thought I'd find a connection between P.G. Wodehouse and Snoop
Doggy Dogg, but as it happens West Coast rappers use a kind of "double
Dutch" where everything but a word's initial consonant(s) gets replaced
by [-Iz@l]. Thus Snoop Dogg's equivalent of "beazel" would be "bizzle"
(see http://lyricspoint.com/sndosd.shtml). This seems to derive from a
less opaque Double Dutch where [-Iz-] gets inserted after an initial
consonant or consonant cluster. (Not to be confused with the Double
Dutch popular a decade ago with hiphop groups like Das EFX, where a word
is preceded by reduplicated initial consonant(s) + [-Ig@di] -- thus
"wack" becomes "wiggedy-wack".) I always assumed these deformations
were supposed to be onomatopoetically echoing a hiphop DJ scratching a
record, but Wodehouse and Sturges are forcing me to reconsider!
--Ben
Matti Lamprhey
> Matti Lamprhey <matti-...@totally-official.com> wrote...
> >
> > Well I'm dumbfounded. "Beazel" is a reasonably familiar word to me,
> > but I don't find it in my huge New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
> > It's a mildly and non-specifically derogatory term for a girl or young
> > woman. A typical usage might be one of the Ugly Sisters saying
> > "Cinderella -- have you ironed my gown yet? Are you there? Where
> > is the beazel?"
>
> 'Beazel' was unknown to me and, I'm not ashamed to say, I have a slang
> vocabulary of generous proportions. Partridge's DoS 8th edition says
> 'beazel. A girl since ca. 1930 (P.G. Wodehouse. An arbitrary formation -
After I posted I remembered that Bertie Wooster used it once or twice.
Such a use would definitely not have been as a prob. euph. for bitch,
though -- more like another variant of "young geezer". I've made some
incantations on alt.fan.wodehouse to see what arises. It seems that
rec.arts.books is keeping its powder dry on this one...
Matti
Robert Lipton
Michael Zeleny wrote:
>
> In Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, the following exchange takes
> place between the eponymous protagonist embarking on an ersatz hobo
> adventure, the girl twisting his arm to tag along, and Mr. Burrows,
> his butler:
>
> Sullivan: Why don't you go back with the car? You look about as
> much like a boy as Mae West.
> The Girl: All right, they'll think I'm your frail.
> Burrows: I believe it's called a "beazel," miss, if memory serves.
>
> Alas, my memory fails to serve. Any words of wisdom regarding the term?
>
Rented the dvd, did you? I was pleased to see it, since it's in my top
20 Preston Sturges movies. Everything is, except THE GREAT MOMENT.
According to Partridge, it's meant "girl" since about 1930. He cited
P.G. Wodehouse and suggests it's a euphemism for "bitch." There's
another he slipped past the Hays Office.
Bob
M.J.Powell
<bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> writes
>
>
>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>
>> In Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, the following exchange takes
>> place between the eponymous protagonist embarking on an ersatz hobo
>> adventure, the girl twisting his arm to tag along, and Mr. Burrows,
>> his butler:
>>
>> Sullivan: Why don't you go back with the car? You look about as
>> much like a boy as Mae West.
>> The Girl: All right, they'll think I'm your frail.
>> Burrows: I believe it's called a "beazel," miss, if memory serves.
>>
>> Alas, my memory fails to serve. Any words of wisdom regarding the term?
>
>One movie site (http://www.filmsite.org/sull2.html) glosses "frail" and
>"beazle" as "female companion".
A 'frail' is also a shopping bag with handles, at least it was in my
mother's day.
Mike
--
M.J.Powell
Tony Cooper
> Sullivan: Why don't you go back with the car? You look about as
> much like a boy as Mae West.
> The Girl: All right, they'll think I'm your frail.
> Burrows: I believe it's called a "beazel," miss, if memory serves.
>
Damon Runyon used the word "frail" frequently to describe a
female.
Bill Schnakenberg
"And from a jail, came the wail, of a down-hearted frail
and they played that as part of the blues"
(Birth of the Blues - Frank Sinatra)
--
Bill
Rowan Dingle
>Fascinating. Anyone know of other "euphemisms" along these lines? I
>never thought I'd find a connection between P.G. Wodehouse and Snoop
>Doggy Dogg, [...]
You didn't? Have you never been struck by the similarities between
Bertie Wooster's jovially fatuous greeting, 'What ho! What ho! What
ho!', and the rapper's jovially fatuous greeting, 'Yo! Wossup! Wossup!
Wossup!'?
(OK, I haven't actually heard Mr Dogg say this. I'm actually thinking of
Normski, the photographer who lived with Janet Street-Porter and fronted
a rap-heavy TV show 5 or 10 or 15 years ago. He used to start his show
with a great long stream of Woosterish exclamations. The details have
faded. The main ingredient was, I think, 'Wossup!' ['What's up?'] but it
could have been 'Wossat!' or something similar. There were also a few
Yos and when he was on form he brought the Woostering to a triumphant
close with a Wossappnin or two. I remember thinking that Professor
Normski - being then in the vanguard of a yoof culture that required its
adherents to scowl and look menacing the whole time, that thought of
itself as radical and appnin - would not have been pleased to know that
he came across as a puppyish, gormless and jovial Wooster figure. His
argot nicely demonstrated the universality of something or other.
Smiling or scowling, a craze is a craze. Youth always re-invents the
wheel.
Poor old Normski. Yo bro, wossup? Wossappnin? Chin up, old fruit, what-
what!)
--
Rowan Dingle
Jim Braun
"Bill Schnakenberg" <will...@frontiernet.net> wrote in message news:3B978538...@frontiernet.net...
> "And from a jail, came the wail, of a down-hearted frail
> and they played that as part of the blues"
> (Birth of the Blues - Frank Sinatra)
("Birth of the Blues" - words by B. G. De Sylva and Lew Brown, music
by Ray Henderson - sung by, among many others, Frank Sinatra)
--
[Jim Braun (pocaloo @ yahoo . com) - Portland, OR, USA]
John Dean
M.J.Powell <mi...@pickmere.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3zNvWcAS...@pickmere.demon.co.uk...
> In article <3B971A6B...@midway.uchicago.edu>, Ben Zimmer
> <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> writes
> >
>
> mother's day.
'a shopping bag with handles'? As poignant a metaphor for a woman's life in
your Mother's Day as any I have heard.
John Dean
Ben Zimmer <bgzi...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:3B976A26...@midway.uchicago.edu...
Oh, this is getting scary. We're on the way to proving that PG was the
inspiration for modern rap. In the Wodehouse era (and amongst the Frank
Richards fans of all ages) there is a tendency to substitute -gger for the
final syllable(s) of a word to produce a slang version. Thus was it that
Rugby became Rugger. And, according to Partridge, the Prince of Wales became
Pragger-Wagger while a waste paper basket became the wagger-pagger-bagger.
So, Ix-nay on the ang-slay. OK?
--
John 'Is this a dagwood I see before me?' Dean -- Oxford
Francis Muir
modified "bitch" to "beazel". What the Butler Said gives it a
Wodehousiaqn yone.