Seldom-Used Words

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lurgy n. (the word is apparently considered to be slang but HP and Og are better suited to advise us on this), 1. Approximate British equivalent of the American playground term cooties, meaning a fictitious, yet highly infectious disease. Unlike cooties, now used by adults to refer to an general undefined infectious malady. Normally used in the form "the dreaded lurgy".

2. an illness that is not serious but passes easily from person to person.

3. British slang for feeling like shit.

N.B. The word is pronounced with a hard "g" as in "Fergie."



Origin:
The term originates from an episode of the 1950s radio comedy "The Goon Show" in which an epidemic of "The Dreaded Lurgi" was said to be about to sweep across Britain. It turned out that the lurgi was in fact a ficitious disease created by brass instrument makers who had claimed that no brass band player had ever died of the lurgi (thereby increasing sales hugely).

"The Goon Show" was an anarchic and surreal radio comedy series that starred Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. It was written by Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes.






It may not be seldom-used in England, Scotland and Wales but it is unknown here in Her Majesty's former colonies. I came across the word in Andrew W. Montford's "Bishop Hill" blog.

...The rumpus over the Met Office's downgrading of its climate predictions rumbles on (much like my lurgy!)...

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/1/9/rumbling-on.html

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

 


lurgy n. (the word is apparently considered to be slang but HP and Og are better suited to advise us on this), 1. Approximate British equivalent of the American playground term cooties, meaning a fictitious, yet highly infectious disease. Unlike cooties, now used by adults to refer to an general undefined infectious malady. Normally used in the form "the dreaded lurgy".

2. an illness that is not serious but passes easily from person to person.

3. British slang for feeling like shit.



From Worldwidewords:

Q From Iain McGuffog: Do you know the etymology of the phrase, the dreaded lurgy? I know it’s related to illness and the Cambridge online dictionary says it is ‘a humorous way of speaking of any illness which is not very serious but is easily caught’.

A Your question neatly ties together two of my great interests: the history of words and old BBC radio comedy shows. It’s also timely, since the dreaded lurgi (so written in the script) struck Britain fifty years ago next Tuesday (9 November 1954), in the seventh programme of the fifth series of The Goon Show. This anarchic and surreal radio comedy series starred Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe; it was written by Spike Milligan, between bouts of depression, though on this occasion Eric Sykes (who shared an office with him at the time) did most of the work.

The plot, such as it was, dealt with an outbreak of a previously unknown disease. It was solemnly announced in the House of Commons that “Lurgi is the most dreadful malady known to mankind. In six weeks it could swamp the whole of the British Isles.” Of course, there was no epidemic — it was a fraud perpetrated by those arch-criminals, Count Jim “Thighs” Moriarty and the Honourable Hercules Grytpype-Thynne (trading as Messrs Goosey and Bawkes, a barely-disguised reference to the music publisher Boosey and Hawkes) who put it about that nobody who played a brass-band instrument had ever been known to catch lurgi; this resulted in their disposing profitably of vast amounts of merchandise.

The Goons were then highly popular and the episode resulted in the phrase “the dreaded lurgi” becoming a school playground term for some horrid infection you had supposedly contracted, especially one you had as a result of being dirty or smelly or just not like the other kids. It has survived to the present day, not only among my generation, but as a slang term in schools across Britain among children who have no idea where it comes from. The disease is also known in Australia and New Zealand, but all Americans seem to be inoculated against it at birth, since it’s virtually unknown to them (but then, they have cooties instead).

OK, so much for the background. Where did this word lurgi or lurgy come from? One school of thought holds that Milligan (or Sykes) invented it. It is also said that it might be an aphetic form of allergy; it’s an ingenious idea, though English doesn’t usually lose a stressed initial vowel. Also, lurgi is said with a hard g, to rhyme with Fergie, so that the different value of the g in allergy tells against it. Others say it comes from the Lurgi gasification process, which was developed by the company of that name in Germany in the 1930s to get gas from low-grade coal.

But there’s some evidence they borrowed an existing English dialect term, perhaps one they had heard in the Army during World War Two. The English Dialect Dictionary notes lurgy from northern England as an adjective meaning idle or lazy. This may well be linked with fever-largie, fever-lurden or fever-lurgan, a sarcastic dialect term for a supposed disease of idleness; this was recorded as still current in some places at the time the dictionary was compiled at the end of the nineteenth century (I mean that the term was still being used, but presumably the malady was lingering on as well).

One can imagine Milligan and Sykes being tickled by the idea of an epidemic outbreak of idleness.

World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–2013. All rights reserved. See the copyright page for notes about linking to and reusing this page. For help in viewing the site, see the technical FAQ. Your comments, corrections and suggestions are always welcome.


Lurgy is often used to describe prevalent illnesses, particularly among schoolchildren, that are highly infectious and quickly spread.

Recently my oldest grandchild's primary school had an attack of 'the dreaded lurgy' in that case Norovirus, or the Winter Vomiting Bug.

At one point one-third of the school's roll was absent with the current lurgy.

Lurgy is also used for non-specific ailments such as URTI (Upper Respiratory Tract Infection) that can have multiple causes.

Lurgy is a synonym for 'the bug', 'the virus', and other similar words but an attack of 'the lurgy' is generally reserved for mild, annoying, irritating but not life-threatening conditions.

However while a fit child or adult could dismiss 'the lurgy' as a transient annoyance, such infections can be life-threatening for those with impaired immune systems and the extremely old.
 
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When I was in school in the Los Angeles area in the 50s, cooties were lice and children were sent home, when infestation was detected by the nurse. I don't remember what year it was, but some company manufactured a game called Cootie that had to do with a big bug that looked like a huge lice. I have often wondered if it was some kind of educational toy, slid in beneath our awareness. Lice are no laughing matter.

Handley, that tax history was copied and pasted from a website called History of tax or something. I should have specified, just being distracted by my life.

Trysail and Og, thanks for the great explanation of lurgy or lurgi, dreadful or not so, as the case may be.

pestilence - noun a contagious or infectious epidemic disease that is virulent and devastating; specif: BUBONIC PLAGUE
 
lurgy[/COLOR] n. (the word is apparently considered to be slang but HP and Og are better suited to advise us on this), 1. Approximate British equivalent of the American playground term cooties, meaning a fictitious, yet highly infectious disease. Unlike cooties, now used by adults to refer to an general undefined infectious malady. Normally used in the form "the dreaded lurgy".


The word cooties seems, according to a number of internet sources (a Google search on the word is very edifying, and suggests some interesting sources for the word), to have originally meant "body lice". I recall hearing it in use it in that way when I was a boy, sometime around the late Stone Age. (I grew up in western Pennsylvania.)
 
The word cooties seems, according to a number of internet sources (a Google search on the word is very edifying, and suggests some interesting sources for the word), to have originally meant "body lice". I recall hearing it in use it in that way when I was a boy, sometime around the late Stone Age. (I grew up in western Pennsylvania.)

When Og was at school, and when Og's children were at school, there was a very useful person colloquially known as "The Nit Nurse".

The Nit Nurse used to check schoolchildren's hair for evidence of head lice (and in my time other nasties such as Ringworm) and prescribe/provide appropriate treatment.

Head Lice are unfortunately still a common occurrence in UK schools but now there are no Nit Nurses. Parents have to identify and treat the nits themselves. Head Lice seem to prefer clean, well maintained hair. :rolleyes:

My wife has some correspondence between her grandmother, then a soldier's wife based in Cape Town, South Africa, and her great-grandmother. Grandmother, then in her early 20s, had problems with lice and other insect vermin infesting the married quarters.

Great-grandmother's recipe for dealing with the pests is impossible to make now, and probably best left as an interesting historical account. It included Black Powder and burning sulphur (US = sulfur), evacuating the quarters for at least 12 hours followed by several hours of ventilation, and preferably evacuating the neighbours too.

Great-grandfather was more practical. He sent a large pack of Keating's Powder.

Keatings_Fleas_1.jpg


A blast from the past:

Some time after posting the Keating's advert above, I remembered that my oldest aunt and my great-aunts used to sing the first song listed - to a tune from the Church of England Hymn Book Ancient and Modern. I can't remember which tune.

The second song was sung to the tune of 'Who Killed Cock Robin'...
 
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When Og was at school, and when Og's children were at school, there was a very useful person colloquially known as "The Nit Nurse".

The Nit Nurse used to check schoolchildren's hair for evidence of head lice (and in my time other nasties such as Ringworm) and prescribe/provide appropriate treatment.

We had a similar nurse, which we called, unimaginatively, "the School Nurse". (At least we didn't use her name—which none of us knew anyway.)

In those days, only physicians could prescribe. The School Nurse's only course of action was to send the infestee home with instructions that he/she was unwelcome at school (but would not be granted "excused absences") until the School Nurse had performed another inspection upon the infestee's person and found no cooties.

Many found this a welcome vacation from school, though parents, who could be fined rather heavily if their children were absent without excuse for very long, generally did not approve.

Side Note: My third/fourth grade teacher generally told us that the School Nurse would visit later in the day to inspect each of us for "passengers".
 
Of my four children, one was a girl with very long hair. To both our horrors, we discovered a severe infestation on her head on the night of the Christmas pagent. Somehow, she managed to squirm her way through it and we left immediately afterwards to do her first treatment with that horrible stuff Lindane. We had all of Christmas vacation to get rid of it, and we did without cutting her long hair.

To protect myself and my daughter from further infestations, I started volunteering at their school as the "Head Lice Picker", the name the teachers liked to call me. It took seven years to clean up our school, due to a large family of Mexican girls, who were the source, but we did it, with the help of my little staff of assistants. We could boast being Nit Free and have it be the truth. Then, my kids graduated and I honestly don't know what happened, but my little Castle Rock Elementary was known to have the strictest policy on it in the area, so new families entering were more responsible. No one likes getting sent home for lice on their first day back to school, which was always the most crucial day to check every head. Mothers, who said it was impossible, were told the story of my daughter's hair and told to try harder.

In closing, I want to say I watched the evolution of the lice species during my seven years. In the beginning, they were larger and easier to spot, easy to pull off the strand, and easy to get rid of thru the over the counter remedies. Rid made their shells harder and more able to resist the poison, combs made the nits smaller, and tail disintegrating formulas made their connecting tail so hard to pull off the strand, the hair had to be cut above the nit. So much more trouble than when we began. I learned pesticides only make the species adapt and become stronger, the ones who survive, of course. That is life on earth at work.

No new word for now. LOL
 
Of my four children, one was a girl with very long hair. To both our horrors, we discovered a severe infestation on her head on the night of the Christmas pagent. Somehow, she managed to squirm her way through it and we left immediately afterwards to do her first treatment with that horrible stuff Lindane. We had all of Christmas vacation to get rid of it, and we did without cutting her long hair.

To protect myself and my daughter from further infestations, I started volunteering at their school as the "Head Lice Picker", the name the teachers liked to call me. It took seven years to clean up our school, due to a large family of Mexican girls, who were the source, but we did it, with the help of my little staff of assistants. We could boast being Nit Free and have it be the truth. Then, my kids graduated and I honestly don't know what happened, but my little Castle Rock Elementary was known to have the strictest policy on it in the area, so new families entering were more responsible. No one likes getting sent home for lice on their first day back to school, which was always the most crucial day to check every head. Mothers, who said it was impossible, were told the story of my daughter's hair and told to try harder.

In closing, I want to say I watched the evolution of the lice species during my seven years. In the beginning, they were larger and easier to spot, easy to pull off the strand, and easy to get rid of thru the over the counter remedies. Rid made their shells harder and more able to resist the poison, combs made the nits smaller, and tail disintegrating formulas made their connecting tail so hard to pull off the strand, the hair had to be cut above the nit. So much more trouble than when we began. I learned pesticides only make the species adapt and become stronger, the ones who survive, of course. That is life on earth at work.

No new word for now. LOL

At least kids don't get crab lice! Can you imagine trying to deal with that?
 
Yes, that would be difficult at best. I had a bout of that back in the free love sixties, getting more than I bargained for. LOL

pest hole - noun a place subject or liable to epidemic disease

pest house - noun a shelter or hospital for those infected with a pestilential or contagious disease
 
Mewling

Mewling - South Wales Valley slang
"To drive around in a car (usually a clapped-out Escort/Nova covered in cheap spoilers and Max Power stickers) with your mates, wearing baseball hats, listening to an incredibly loud stereo, in an attempt to impress and then impregnate the local 14 year olds."
(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=welsh slang&page=9)

Um, for the purposes of this site, that means of course the local 18 year olds, not 14 year olds.

:nana:
 
You know, Naoko, if the boys in the car are 16, then it is a different situation. The age of consent is like 12, so it becomes a sticky wicket or something like that. LOL

pester - vt 1. obs: OVERCROWDED 2. to harass with petty irritations: ANNOY
 
Agh, agh! My head itches horribly and we have lost the lice comb. I hate lice even more than worms! And the kid and I both have really long hair. Now I have to spend the day combing instead of getting on with my story, er I mean instead of cleaning and sweeping and cooking and generally behaving like Snow White as I always do of course :D.
:eek::eek::eek:
 
You know, Naoko, if the boys in the car are 16, then it is a different situation. The age of consent is like 12, so it becomes a sticky wicket or something like that. LOL

pester - vt 1. obs: OVERCROWDED 2. to harass with petty irritations: ANNOY

A sticky wicket - that sounds interesting :D.

(I was just teasing about the Lit over 18 rule.)

Pippity-ping - the Welsh word for microwave oven. My favourite word at the moment!

:rose:
 
Naoko, that is a great one. As fun to say as it is to read.

pessary - noun 1. a vaginal suppository 2. a device worn in the vaginal to support the uterus, remedy a malposition, or prevent conception
 
Mewling - South Wales Valley slang
"To drive around in a car (usually a clapped-out Escort/Nova covered in cheap spoilers and Max Power stickers) with your mates, wearing baseball hats, listening to an incredibly loud stereo, in an attempt to impress and then impregnate the local 14 year olds."
(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=welsh slang&page=9)

Um, for the purposes of this site, that means of course the local 18 year olds, not 14 year olds.

:nana:

I wonder how many readers outside the UK will even comprehend the 'clapped-out Escort /Nova" reference?
[= cheap, old, small family saloon]



You know, Naoko, if the boys in the car are 16, then it is a different situation. The age of consent is like 12, so it becomes a sticky wicket or something like that. LOL

pester - vt 1. obs: OVERCROWDED 2. to harass with petty irritations: ANNOY

Be careful with "Sticky Wicket", madam, please. It's a serious reference.
Obviously, it refers to the game of Cricket [the good Lord's present to the English].

From Naoko's favourite dictionary (where several of them got it all wrong):
sticky wicket

A term that alludes to a situation in which a person is in trouble.
It comes from cricket where, on uncovered wickets, after a short rainfall a pitch could dry into a 'sticky' which could make it extremely difficult to play on as the ball could be going anywhere.


It makes playing the ball a great deal more difficult; see?
 
Be careful with "Sticky Wicket", madam, please. It's a serious reference.
Obviously, it refers to the game of Cricket [the good Lord's present to the English].

From Naoko's favourite dictionary (where several of them got it all wrong):
sticky wicket

A term that alludes to a situation in which a person is in trouble.
It comes from cricket where, on uncovered wickets, after a short rainfall a pitch could dry into a 'sticky' which could make it extremely difficult to play on as the ball could be going anywhere.


It makes playing the ball a great deal more difficult; see?

I am always careful when playing on a sticky wicket ;)
:rose:
 
I wonder why the good Lord felt he had to punish the English with such a present? :p

[off topic]
Punishment ? Never. It's a privilege to play it, particularly - well..
To play it properly is an art-form not seen in many places. The grace of a well-placed stroke or cut and the leather ball racing towards the boundary are signs that God was smiling upon us.
As opposed to Rounders, where He was obviously joking.
[on topic]
 
[off topic]
Punishment ? Never. It's a privilege to play it, particularly - well..
To play it properly is an art-form not seen in many places. The grace of a well-placed stroke or cut and the leather ball racing towards the boundary are signs that God was smiling upon us.
As opposed to Rounders, where He was obviously joking.
[on topic]

And don't forget the tea and cakes, as Oggbashan says.

Word: Bohea, a black Chinese oolong.
Often to be found in the works of Ms. Heyer, as in 'a dish of bohea'.

:rose:
 
And don't forget the tea and cakes, as Oggbashan says.

Word: Bohea, a black Chinese oolong.
Often to be found in the works of Ms. Heyer, as in 'a dish of bohea'.

:rose:

Village cricket is different. There is usually a public house near the cricket pitch (or the cricket club has an alcohol licence) and the lunch and tea intervals are breaks for more beer...

If a village fielder is near the boundary, you might see him sprinting off the pitch between overs to visit a toilet. The umpires understand such behaviour and allow time for the fielder to return.

A village batsman's bladder capacity might influence the length of his innings. :D
 
A village batsman's bladder capacity might influence the length of his innings. :D

Really darling! I am just an innocent rugby player. I have no idea what you mean when you say someone's bladder capacity might influence the length of anything or their innings and outings.
Oh dear me, excuse me I must go and lie down quietly for a moment! I had no idea cricket would rouse the passions in such a manner. ;)

:rose:
 
Really darling! I am just an innocent rugby player. I have no idea what you mean when you say someone's bladder capacity might influence the length of anything or their innings and outings.
Oh dear me, excuse me I must go and lie down quietly for a moment! I had no idea cricket would rouse the passions in such a manner. ;)

:rose:

[off topic]
Since when has a Rugby player ever been regarded as 'innocent' ?
PS. I love watching the Haka.
[on topic]
 
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