Loo, and other funny words

[Giambattista]

loo[sup]2[/sup]

–noun, plural loos. British Informal .
toilet.

Origin:
1935–40; of uncert. orig.

Well, a while ago I was looking around and didn't find a satisfactory answer to where this word came from, but just did, on the same page!



Word Origin & History

loo
"lavatory," 1940, but perhaps 1922, probably from Fr. lieux d'aisances, "lavatory," lit. "place of ease," picked up by British servicemen in France during World War I. Or possibly a pun on Waterloo, based on water closet.

Hmmm.

Anyone have any other funny and possibly etymologically difficult words they want to post here?

Enlighten us.

 

[stratos]

BLOKE - unknown origin: London slang for fellow, man in the street, first known usage 1851, perhaps from the Celtic 'ploc' meaning 'large, stubborn person' (!); or from Roma (Gypsy) or Hindi 'loke' meaning 'a man'.

 

[rcscwc]

BLOKE - unknown origin: London slang for fellow, man in the street, first known usage 1851, perhaps from the Celtic 'ploc' meaning 'large, stubborn person' (!); or from Roma (Gypsy) or Hindi 'loke' meaning 'a man'.

Lok means people. Lok Sabha, lower house of Parliament, people's council.

Also means world, rather samsar.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Well, a while ago I was looking around and didn't find a satisfactory answer to where this word came from, but just did, on the same page!

Dictionary.com offers yet another hypothesis:

• Origin: 1665–75; short for lanterloo < D lanterlu < F lantur ( e ) lu, special use of meaningless refrain of an old song

This is certainly the oldest citation I've ever seen.

BLOKE - unknown origin: London slang for fellow, man in the street, first known usage 1851, perhaps from the Celtic 'ploc' meaning 'large, stubborn person' (!); or from Roma (Gypsy) or Hindi 'loke' meaning 'a man'.

I've always seen it cited as a rare borrowing from Shelta, the cant of the Irish Travellers. (A mixture of English and Irish vocabulary, often with phonemes rearranged arbitrarily, over a system of English grammar and syntax, deliberately crafted to foil understanding by outsiders.) Shelta bloke is probably from Irish buachaill, "boy," with the consonants shuffled. Another word we've taken from Shelta is "moniker."

 

[rcscwc]

BLOKE - unknown origin: London slang for fellow, man in the street, first known usage 1851, perhaps from the Celtic 'ploc' meaning 'large, stubborn person' (!); or from Roma (Gypsy) or Hindi 'loke' meaning 'a man'.

Example of a half baked knowledge.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Example of a half baked knowledge.

There has been a surge of interest in Shelta in the last couple of decades, which probably means that a few Travellers finally deigned to sit down with English scholars and let them analyze the language (actually a cant.) "Bloke" is a documented Shelta word, although its etymology from Gaelic buachaill is only an educated guess. The "street people" of the English cities had more dealings with the Travellers than the upper class did, so it's not surprising that Shelta words like "bloke" and "moniker" first showed up in urban slang before being picked up by the larger anglophone community. We don't say "bloke" in America, but "moniker" is used humorously.

There's even been a blip of interest in the Travellers themselves. There was a TV show in America called "The Riches," about the small Travellers' community in our country, starring Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver.

 

[rcscwc]

Don't PLUCK and play. I said that to think that bloke has any connection with lok, a Sanskrit/Hindi word is half baked. Now it turns out it fully unbaked idea. Anyway, what has Shelta, whatever it is, got to do with my post you replied to? Or was it just spam? Or a show off?

 

[Giambattista]

Fraggle Rocker is a resident linguistical theoretician. Don't make him angry. He can rage in at least a dozen languages and dialects. He can even express mild disapproval in Proto Indo-European.

I now find myself that much wiser about Shelta.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Anyway, what has Shelta, whatever it is, got to do with my post you replied to?

This is the Linguistics board. Etymology is one of its primary topics. You pointed out that the word "bloke" is not really of Indian origin. I supplied the correct etymology.

The Travellers (also called "tinkers" in English, Minceir or Pavees in their own language, an Lucht Siúil, "the walking people" in Irish) are a nomadic population of around 20,000 ethnically Irish and religiously Catholic people whose precise origin is not known and may be as recent as the 19th century or as far back as the 5th. They have much in common with the Gypsies (with whom they are often casually but inaccurately associated): distancing themselves from the majority population, not settling in permanent homes, a higher than average crime rate, distrusted by the majority. They have been called one of the most discriminated-against ethnic groups in Europe. Today there are Traveller communities in Ireland, the UK and the USA.

A secretive people, they crafted their own language by combining English and Irish vocabulary, arbitrarily rearranging the sounds within the words, and laying it over a substratum of English syntax and grammar. This type of speech, deliberately created to avoid understanding by outsiders, is called a cant. The most well-known cant in English-speaking countries is Pig Latin (Ig-pay Atin-lay); in fact it's so well-known that it doesn't work any more.

The name of the Travellers' cant is Shelta. "Bloke" and "moniker" are Shelta words that have been borrowed by English.

 

[rcscwc]

This is the Linguistics board. Etymology is one of its primary topics. You pointed out that the word "bloke" is not really of Indian origin. I supplied the correct etymology.

Since lok does not remotely mean MAN, your tracing is baseless and unfounded.

Similiar sounding words do not constitute a root.

Of course many terms can be be found to have India roots. Chit is one such word. Means a slip of paper. Origin is in chiththi, a letter.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Since lok does not remotely mean MAN, your tracing is baseless and unfounded.

Perhaps the other members are curious to know the etymology of the word "bloke," once it came up. In any case, I'm sure the people who bother coming to the linguistics subforum might very well be interested to learn about Shelta, which is rather unique.

 

[stratos]

Example of a half baked knowledge.

Ah, the internet, that dear old silicone nerve centre full of lies. Over to you to take these flawed websites outside and give them a good seeing to. Maybe Fraggle will hold your towel, though he's already done the hard yards on this topic, usefully. I can't as I've got some serious lying down to get back to.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bloke

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bloke

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-blo3.htm

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Ah, the internet, that dear old silicone nerve centre full of lies. Over to you to take these flawed websites outside and give them a good seeing to.

Incorrect etymologies were around long before the internet was created. Etymology is really difficult to do. You very seldom have a detailed chain of evidence showing the development of one word into another. Especially before printing created an explosion of written language.

Shelta is only spoken by twenty thousand secretive people who try to stay in the shadows and very much don't want us to understand it! It's not like there's a Shelta specialist in every university language school, and they're all combing through the English language looking for words that might be Shelta borrowings.

The nice thing about the internet is that errors can be corrected so much more quickly and easily than in the past. Take Wikipedia for example: it's a whole lot faster and easier to delete a mistake than to type it in the first place!

 

[rcscwc]

Ah, the internet, that dear old silicone nerve centre full of lies. Over to you to take these flawed websites outside and give them a good seeing to. Maybe Fraggle will hold your towel, though he's already done the hard yards on this topic, usefully. I can't as I've got some serious lying down to get back to.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bloke

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bloke

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-blo3.htm

Aggregate knowledge of a million morons is still moron. Fraggle seemly picked it from Wiki and claims to be an authority on what Hindi word means what.

had he googled a bit he would know lok means people, like in Lok Sabha, House of People, the lower house of Parliament. Like House of Commons ie people.

Is common derived from come-on?

 

[Stryder]

This is the Linguistics board. Etymology is one of its primary topics. You pointed out that the word "bloke" is not really of Indian origin. I supplied the correct etymology.

The Travellers (also called "tinkers" in English, Minceir or Pavees in their own language, an Lucht Siúil, "the walking people" in Irish) are a nomadic population of around 20,000 ethnically Irish and religiously Catholic people whose precise origin is not known and may be as recent as the 19th century or as far back as the 5th. They have much in common with the Gypsies (with whom they are often casually but inaccurately associated): distancing themselves from the majority population, not settling in permanent homes, a higher than average crime rate, distrusted by the majority. They have been called one of the most discriminated-against ethnic groups in Europe. Today there are Traveller communities in Ireland, the UK and the USA.

A secretive people, they crafted their own language by combining English and Irish vocabulary, arbitrarily rearranging the sounds within the words, and laying it over a substratum of English syntax and grammar. This type of speech, deliberately created to avoid understanding by outsiders, is called a cant. The most well-known cant in English-speaking countries is Pig Latin (Ig-pay Atin-lay); in fact it's so well-known that it doesn't work any more.

The name of the Travellers' cant is Shelta. "Bloke" and "moniker" are Shelta words that have been borrowed by English.

You missed the usage of the word "Pikey" that can also be associated with "Travellers". Incidentally England use to be filled with Toll roads and "Turn Pikes", which obviously travellers really wouldn't want to spend money on which might have given them the rogue appearance that to this day they still don. (It's also why it was likely called a "Turn Pike" as it tends to turn Pikey's away)

(It wouldn't be surprising to suggest that one or two masked Highwaymen were likely travellers in origin and it could also be posed that coastal smuggling would of require Travellers to smuggle wares beyond the initial drop off points. It could also be suggested that various old mythical stories of headless horsemen or large black hell-demon dogs emitting fire from their mouths was likely stories spread by travellers to help cover up some of their misdeedings, this hypothesis is greatly reasoned with the advent of Gypsies also increasing popular ghostly myths, fortune telling and not forgetting the odd curse here and there for the inhospitious housekeepers telling them to go on their merry way.)

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Fraggle seemly picked it from Wiki and claims to be an authority on what Hindi word means what. had he googled a bit he would know lok means people, like in Lok Sabha, House of People, the lower house of Parliament. Like House of Commons ie people.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. It was not I who suggested the derivation of "bloke" from lok.