Even the word "terrific" comes from "terrible" and "terrify". Funny, huh? "Jerry-rigged", I always heard, came from the innovation of the German tank crews. "Jerry can" is the large, square gas can that those same crews used. They just kind of caught on with everybody else. "Flak", as in 'catching flak from your parents for screwing up' is another entry from the German military which is an acronym for Flieger Abwehr Kanonen. Snafu (situation normal, all fouled up (stronger language version available)) Tarfu (things are really fouled up (see above)) Fubar (Fucked up beyond all recognition) Fubb (Fucked up beyond belief) And one nobody gives a second thought to anymore: Fax (short for facsimile)
Even the word "terrific" comes from "terrible" and "terrify". Funny, huh? "Jerry-rigged", I always heard, came from the innovation of the German tank crews. "Jerry can" is the large, square gas can that those same crews used. They just kind of caught on with everybody else. "Flak", as in 'catching flak from your parents for screwing up' is another entry from the German military which is an acronym for Flieger Abwehr Kanonen. Snafu (situation normal, all fouled up (stronger language version available)) Tarfu (things are really fouled up (see above)) Fubar (Fucked up beyond all recognition) Fubb (Fucked up beyond belief) And one nobody gives a second thought to anymore: Fax (short for facsimile) But in the foreign slang department, maybe somebody here can clear things up for me. My father spoke Spanish fluently, and it was the high-class stuff, not the language of the field workers. He understood their phrases and what not, but his grandmother had raised him to be respectful and polite to others. (Needless to say, he was a big hit in our barrio, always speaking respectfully even to the little gang-bangers. He had no problem pulling vicious insults when he had to, though.) Anyway, he had been joking around with some of his work crew, most of whom were from Mexico, when he laughingly called one of them "pendejo", which has always meant "dummy" or "idiot" and is used generally not as a serious jab (kind of like when your buddy makes a fool out of himself and you say "you asshole" with a grin). Blood was nearly shed over this because apparently the word has changed definition to become one of the foulest things you can call someone from south of the border. Has it changed, or does it depend on region?
Emmet, swart, and snel. Those mean "ant", "black", and "fast" respectively. They are old Germanic words. They have cognates in modern German: "Ameise", "schwarz", and "schnell".
"awful", the old meaning - "Filled with awe, especially: Filled with or displaying great reverence." It's weird that it now means terrible or unpleasant, almost a total reversal of meaning. i thought the were two seperate words aweful, and awful
I looked up "aweful", couldn't find it. My dictionary is small but a quick net serch didn't find it either. I didn't look that hard but google didn't have a definition for your word. Let me know if I missed it, I'd be interested to know.
"I looked up "aweful", couldn't find it. My dictionary is small but a quick net serch didn't find it either. I didn't look that hard but google didn't have a definition for your word. Let me know if I missed it, I'd be interested to know." my mistake
Palaver - Verb: Talk unnecessarily at length. Noun: Prolonged and idle discussion. Mosey - Verb: Walk or move in a leisurely manner. (sorry if this is a bit of necromancy [bringing back threads long dead])
Frank Zappa repopularized this one... in the song "Nanook Rubs It" from Apostrophe in 1974. Some references say it was used by blues artists dating back to the 1950′s.
Why is this awesome thread in the Cesspool? That's not a forgotten word! I'm always palavering "palaver" in my palaverings. Totally reflective of the paucity of good, solid books these days. Meh. On topic: Love it, words, words, words!-- allright, how to keep this short? Pejorations--this is the term used to describe words that have degenerated in meaning from something culturally good to something culturally bad. "Awful" is a word one of you pukes gives in here as an example, but that's not as intereting as 'gay', which, AHEM, COUGH, WHEEZE, HACK, POKING SUPERSTRING IN FOReHEAD, used to mean 'merry' or 'happy'. Why should the flamboyance of a grown man doing the cabbage patch at a Lady Gaga concert degenerate to a term used for homosexuals? An even better one? "Silly", which in Old English used to mean 'blessed' How telling, no? That the "blessed", that innocent fold of undereducated prey with their sweet little heads down just waiting for someone to come and crack that sweet little skull with a ratchet, should one day come to mean something "ludicrous", "pathetic", or "foolish".
Same could be said for a tied pile of sticks. Time was when keeping a faggot locked in your basement was a perfectly acceptable precaution for keeping warm in the winter.