Phraseology Tidbits

[lovecraft68]

There seem to be two warring factions on the origin, in use since the sixteenth century of the phrase, "nose to the grindstone," meaning applying yourself conscientiously to your work. Some say it came from the habit of millers to check for possible burning from overuse of the stone cereal was being ground on (and thus burn the cereal) by occasionally putting their nose to the stone and smelling it. (The argument against this being the source is that miller's stones were known as millstones rather than grindstones since before the phrase came in vogue.) The other faction says it comes from knife grinders bending close to the stone to make sure the knife was angled right for grinding.

This fascinating discussion is from phrases.org.uk rather than Kipfer, who apparently doesn't care much about the phrase.

As far as the expression, "the shit hitting the fan," used to describe a previously secret situation being made public unexpectedly, is concerned, the phrase hit the public purview in the 1930s with Eric Partidge's A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English.

Interesting on both, Thank you.

 

[LettersFromTatyana]

An off shoot of "hat trick", pertaining to ice hockey, is the "Gordie Howe hat trick," when a player manages a goal, an assist and a fight.

Which is funny, because as the announcers always like to point out (or at least the Detroit announcers always like to point out), Gordie Howe only had two or three in his entire career.

 

[sr71plt]

Mark your calendar

The phrase "red-letter day," as in a really standout good day, obviously wasn't invented by Nathaniel Hawthorne for Hester Prynne. The phrase is even older than that, going back to about 1700, with the reference to "red Letter" going back to the fifteenth century. A red letter was marked on ecclesiasitical calendars to highlight church festivals and saints' days (if the latter, then every day would be a red-letter day, wouldn't it?). By the eighteenth century, the phrase was being extended beyond the church to be a good day in general. Anthony Trollope was caught slipping it into his writing in 1887.

These tidbits are mainly based on Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book, Phraseology. Where other sources are used, they will be given. Observations from other sources are quite welcome, preferably with the source identified.

 

[EMPRESSLAINIE]

The Transgender/Transexual Dictionary

Probably miss some, but there is a wide variety of words that the cispeople never heard of:

gg: genetic girl, a nontrans person born female
cispeople: those that aren't trans
mtf: a male to female transexual person
ftm: a female to male transexual person (ala Chaz)
TS: transexual as in the 2 above
TG: trangendered; officially it covers both sexual preference and sexual identity.
Sexual preference: whether you are homosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian; anyone not heterosexual. and who is not a transexual.
Sexual Identity: the way your brain is wired as opposed to the genitalia you have; as in mtf, ftm above. It has NOTHING to do with sexual preference. Transexuals are nearly evenly divided between bi, heterosexual and homosexual.
Brains: It has been determined by autopsies that mtf's have female brains, and ftm's have male brains; so the person eventually will want to match the brain gender rather than the body gender.
Transition: the process of changing from your apparent natal gender to the one you really are.
Sex: what your body parts indicate
Gender: what you know you are contrary to the above.
Complicated sexual activity: when say an mtf and an ftm have sexual activity, mentally and physically they are heterosexual, but each one is mentally the opposite sex of their body. When a cisman and a mtf have sex, it would physically appear to be homosexual, but the mtf is really a female person with male parts so mentally it is heterosexual. Same for a woman and an ftm.
Hermaphrodite: a person with both male and female sexual organs, but may or not have both fully developed and functional.
Intersex: The new official term (politically correct for God knows what reason to be applied now to hermaphrodites which is now a verboten word.
Androgynous: People who may live and feel one day as a woman and another day as a man; or a person who dresses such that you always wonder which they are.
Shemale: a person who has taken hormones to develop what is usually a beautiful female body, but with the male parts restored to full function and usually participating in sex as either a man or woman. Not to be confused with transexual people; mtf or ftm.
Crossdresser, or Transvestite: a male person who just likes to wear women's clothes, and who may get off sexually from doing it. NOT TO BE CONFUSED
WITH MTF TRANSEXUALS; who would be insulted if you called them a crossdresser.
CD: crossdresser, see above
TV: transvestite, see above
LGBTQI: Abbreviation for: lesbian-gay-bi-gender queer-intersexed: in other words everyone not cisgendered.
GenderQueer: see androgynous
Group: Usually a group of transexual and transgendered people who meet regularly to exchange experiences and get support, sometimes a registered therapist or social worker is the leader/arbiter.
Therapy: One of the recommended steps in transition, but not necessary.
WPATH: Harry Benjamin wrote a standard method of treatment for transexual people, and the Harry Benjamin Institute is now called World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Their regimen is therapy followed after up to two years with hormones, electrolytical or laser hair removal, followed by up to two years in "Real Life Experience" (living in the desired gender) followed by surgery which can include FFS-facial feminization surgery;BA-Breast Augmentation; and SRS or GRS- the surgery to change male genitalia to functional female genitalia.
RLE: Real Life Experience as above
In Canada for the government to pay for SRS you have to follow all of the WPATH steps.
Electrolysis: removal of facial or other body hair by electrolysis.
Laser hair removal: removal of facial or other body hair by laser.
SRS-Sexual Reassignment Surgery (US term)
GRS-Genital Reassignment Surgery (UK term)
In the US most insurance will not pay for SRS, although VA can be made to pay for all of the steps.
Thailand: one of the best and less expensive places to get SRS/GRS. They have excellent doctors.
Some people like me just transition in one day with no therapy, no electrolysis,no hormones (I did start 2 yrs ago, with a RX I asked my GP for)
Then I told the Dr to double my dosage after a year.
HRT: Hormone Replacement Therapy-for ciswomen sometimes prescribed after menopause to ease hot flashes, etc. For transfolk, female hormones, estradiol or equine derived estrogen with progesterone is used along with blockers for testosterone, which are usually spironolactone, finistere (propecia) or some other one. Also plant estrogens (phytoestrogens) can be used without a prescription and will grow breasts. Changes made by hormones over a period of time are PERMANENT; for mtf's it includes breast growth, body reshaping, loss of upper body muscles,skin softening, body hair decreasing, loss of libido totally, loss of male functionality totally, some shrinkage of male genitalia, sterility. Unfortunately for mtf's it wont change your voice or regrow hair you lost due to male pattern baldness.

For ftm's testosterone is used: it changes the voice to male, grows facial
hair, builds muscles, increases libido, enlarges the clitoris.

This is published in the interest of education for those who do not understand transfolk or transgendered people in the hopes it will remove some animosity that many people feel toward transfolk. We aren't monsters, we aren't child molesters, we aren't violent people any more than the average population is.

What we want most of all is simply to be accepted as the person we really are, not as we were presented at birth.

 

[sr71plt]

Not a drunk (necessarily)

One who has a "gimlet eye" isn't looking up from the bottom of a martini glass. The "gimlet" in the phrase, which is used for a penetrating stare, is a piercing (get it? "piercing/penetrating") augur tool used in carpentry. The word origin is French, from the fifteenth century (guimbelet). The phrase itself started appearing in dictionaries in the early nineteenth century.

The gimlet cocktail (1928) is said to have the same "penetrating tool" origin, being a drink with "penetrating effect" on the drinker.

These tidbits are mainly based on Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book, Phraseology. Where other sources are used, they will be given. Observations from other sources are quite welcome, preferably with the source identified.

 

[sr71plt]

Might as well go big

Today's phrase popped up because it dropped into a story I wrote earlier today. The phrase "in for a penny, in for a pound," meaning a commitment to see something through regardless of what it involves, is, of course, British (money) in origin. It goes back at least to the late 1700s and E. Ravenscroft's Canterbury Guests ("Well than, O'er shooes, o'er boots. And In for a Penny, in for a Pound.") It's thought to relate to the punishment for theft in early England, where you would be punished as much for stealing a penny as you would be for stealing a pound (and probably quite painfully so, too).

These tidbits are mainly based on Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book, Phraseology. Where other sources are used, they will be given. Observations from other sources are quite welcome, preferably with the source identified

 

[sr71plt]

Not something talked about

I've been asked about the origin of the gay male terms "top" and "bottom," which are probably the two most important words in gay male cruising. Not a great surprise, but the timing of the origin of these just doesn't seem to have been speculated about in the literature, and the dictionaries I've looked at don't define either "top" or "bottom" in a sexual sense or to include the verb "to top" in the sense that it's commonly used in the gay male world.

The murky past of the words is understandable, as it's only been recent decades in which such activity was discussed openly at all. Even the definitions given them in slang and gay dictionaries don't seem to have settled down, with the two discussed by some as representing sexual positions--the meanings having formed when gay sexual positions were considered as "missionary" as straight positions ("bottom" under and "top" covering). As an adjunct to this, another explanation is that the "top" is the dominant position (top of the totem pole, so to speak) and "bottom" is the passive/submissive position (lower on the totem pole).

Both of these are busted by the expansion of both position (cowboy style cock riding being popular as well as other exotic positions coming into play) and attitude, though. There are aggressive and dominant "bottoms" and passive "just lay there" tops.

The most assured differentiation definition, therefore, seems to focus on who has the cock and who has it inside them (what a surprise!), with a "top" defined as the penetrator and the "bottom" as the penetrated.

Anyone who can come up with some early dating on these terms being in usage in a gay male sense is quite welcome to chime in here.

(Kipfer's Phraseology is, naturally, completely silent on this discussion.)

 

[sr71plt]

I know what you assumed

Contrary to titilated thought, the origin of the phrase "balls to the wall," meaning launching an all-out effort, is attributed to the Vietnam War era, in which fighter jets had ball-shaped grips on the throttle and fuel mixture sticks.

The zoom-zoom phrase "pedal to the metal," is attributed to the pilots of the Vietnam War era as well, referring to how fast bombers needed to get away from the targets just bombed to put safe distance between themselves and the resulting flak (and AAA fire).

 

[_Lynn_]

I've been asked about the origin of the gay male terms "top" and "bottom," which are probably the two most important words in gay male cruising. Not a great surprise, but the timing of the origin of these just doesn't seem to have been speculated about in the literature, and the dictionaries I've looked at don't define either "top" or "bottom" in a sexual sense or to include the verb "to top" in the sense that it's commonly used in the gay male world.

The murky past of the words is understandable, as it's only been recent decades in which such activity was discussed openly at all. Even the definitions given them in slang and gay dictionaries don't seem to have settled down, with the two discussed by some as representing sexual positions--the meanings having formed when gay sexual positions were considered as "missionary" as straight positions ("bottom" under and "top" covering). As an adjunct to this, another explanation is that the "top" is the dominant position (top of the totem pole, so to speak) and "bottom" is the passive/submissive position (lower on the totem pole).

Both of these are busted by the expansion of both position (cowboy style cock riding being popular as well as other exotic positions coming into play) and attitude, though. There are aggressive and dominant "bottoms" and passive "just lay there" tops.

The most assured differentiation definition, therefore, seems to focus on who has the cock and who has it inside them (what a surprise!), with a "top" defined as the penetrator and the "bottom" as the penetrated.

Anyone who can come up with some early dating on these terms being in usage in a gay male sense is quite welcome to chime in here.

(Kipfer's Phraseology is, naturally, completely silent on this discussion.)

I have a book called ‘Erotic Literature, Twenty-Four Centuries of Sensual Writing’, edited by Jane Mills, Harper Collins Publishers. After looking through it for a while, I found a blurb on homosexual love and lovemaking. A section on Greek culture in Byzantium in the sixth century mentions epigrams were both heterosexual and homosexual. Apparently even without a word for ‘homosexual’, the Greeks of that time accepted that men might be straight, gay, or both. The poets Strato (AD 125), Automedon (90-50 BC), and Meleager (80 BC) wrote about male homosexual desire.

That’s all I found, and not the terms you used here, but I had the book and thought it was worth a shot.

 

[sr71plt]

I have a book called ‘Erotic Literature, Twenty-Four Centuries of Sensual Writing’, edited by Jane Mills, Harper Collins Publishers. After looking through it for a while, I found a blurb on homosexual love and lovemaking. A section on Greek culture in Byzantium in the sixth century mentions epigrams were both heterosexual and homosexual. Apparently even without a word for ‘homosexual’, the Greeks of that time accepted that men might be straight, gay, or both. The poets Strato (AD 125), Automedon (90-50 BC), and Meleager (80 BC) wrote about male homosexual desire.

That’s all I found, and not the terms you used here, but I had the book and thought it was worth a shot.

Thanks. The Greeks are still pretty open about that. I lived right on the Green Line (the line separating Greek Cyprus from Turkish Cyprus), with a Greek firing range right below the mesa my house sat on. I could go over and look down into that see young Greek soldiers getting blow jobs from Greek civilian men. When I asked about that, I was told that receiving a blow job from a man wasn't considered homosexual by the one receiving it (but it was for the one giving it). It was simply relieving yourself--sort of what masturbation has become for many others. I was just told that it was the Greek way. (Of course anything they did with sheep wasn't considered homosexual either--or much out of the ordinary.)

A young man being given over to an older man for initiation--especially in the artistic world where more mentoring than just sexual was going on--wasn't seen as much of anything unusual on Cyprus either (when I last was there). Of course the young guy was expected to marry in his early twenties and then only fuck his wife (and any other woman who was willing).

 

[_Lynn_]

Thanks. The Greeks are still pretty open about that. I lived right on the Green Line (the line separating Greek Cyprus from Turkish Cyprus), with a Greek firing range right below the mesa my house sat on. I could go over and look down into that see young Greek soldiers getting blow jobs from Greek civilian men. When I asked about that, I was told that receiving a blow job from a man wasn't considered homosexual by the one receiving it (but it was for the one giving it). It was simply relieving yourself--sort of what masturbation has become for many others. I was just told that it was the Greek way. (Of course anything they did with sheep wasn't considered homosexual either--or much out of the ordinary.)

A young man being given over to an older man for initiation--especially in the artistic world where more mentoring than just sexual was going on--wasn't seen as much of anything unusual on Cyprus either (when I last was there). Of course the young guy was expected to marry in his early twenties and then only fuck his wife (and any other woman who was willing).

There was a sentence or two about Greek youth in that same section. Boys didn't qualify for citizen status, so sex between a man and a boy fell into the same category as sex with a woman, a slave, or a foreigner. And as you observed, it was the Greek way.

 

[sr71plt]

Final punch

The term "punch line," the final "point" of a joke, as used in literature is dated to about 1921, although theater folks have said it existed in a comedian's formula (setup/premise/punchline) long before that. Some even say it goes back to the Punch and Judy puppet shows of medieval times, when the play stopped with Punch beating Judy with a stick. (Ah for the good old days.) Sources seem to agree, though, that "punch" was once a synonym for "point," and that the punch line of a joke represents the point of the joke.

You may have had to wait for the punch line inside the pages of a book until 1921 but you could get "punch drunk" there as early as 1915.

These tidbits are mainly based on Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book, Phraseology. Where other sources are used, they will be given. Observations from other sources are quite welcome, preferably with the source identified.

 

[sr71plt]

More frisky than mad

Although I don't use the phrase "mad as a March hare," which usually denotes being zany, all that much (although some Lit. forum discussions bring it to mind), lots of writers have used it before--for a very long time. When it comes up we usually think of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and 1865. But before him, Erasmus was referring to mad marsh hares (with "marsh" later corrupted into "March") in the mid fifteenth century, and before him Chaucer had a cut at in in the mid fourteenth century. Perhaps the origin is that the rabbit fodder in the marshes during March are particularly fermented.

These tidbits are mainly based on Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book, Phraseology. Where other sources are used, they will be given. Observations from other sources are quite welcome, preferably with the source identified.

 

[sr71plt]

Charming

Charm bracelets weren't invented by bobby soxers (screaming teenage girls in the 1940s wearing poodle skirts and chasing Frank Sinatra on the beach) nor were they named because the thingies dangling off them caused someone to go "Ahhh, isn't that charming?" They originated back in prehistoric times and were very serious--starting with shells with personality. They weren't worn because they were charming but because they were thought to provide mystic charms--protecting the wearer from bad things or attracting good things to the wearer. Queen Victoria is thought to have brought them back into prominence after being out of style for centuries and, more recently, the movie Pirates of the Caribbean made bracelets with sculls and swords and stuff hanging off them popular.

These tidbits are mainly based on Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book, Phraseology. Where other sources are used, they will be given. Observations from other sources are quite welcome, preferably with the source identified

 

[sr71plt]

Speaking of fanny

A couple of threads have popped up in the forum of late discussing what are, in literary terms, called "false friends," words or phrases in one language that resemble ones in another language but that have a different meaning. A word being discussed on the forums is "fanny," which means the "buttocks" in American English, but the "vagina" in British English. For a romp through other such American/British false friends, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...meanings_in_British_and_American_English:_A–L

These tidbits are mainly based on Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book, Phraseology. Where other sources are used, they will be given. Observations from other sources are quite welcome, preferably with the source identified.

 

[sr71plt]

Not a bad hair dye job

The election season 'tis upon us, so we'll delve into the origin of the phrase "grass roots," which has become a political term meaning the base constituent level. In literary terms, the phrase is first known to pop up in Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901), in which it was used to mean the origin or source of a thing ("Not till I came to Shmalegh could I meditate upon the Course of Things, or trace the running grass-roots of Evil.") The politicians had snarfed up the term by 1912, though (Senator Albert J. Beveridge: "This party comes from the grass roots.")

These tidbits are mainly based on Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book, Phraseology. Where other sources are used, they will be given. Observations from other sources are quite welcome, preferably with the source identified.

 

[sr71plt]

Screwed either way

The phrase "over a barrel," meaning being helplessly in someone else's power, is thought to come either from being draped over a barrel to empty the lungs of a drowning person or being draped over a barrel to be flogged. Either way the one being draped won't be having a good time. It's said to be an American expression, first seen in a 1938 cartoon in the Pennsylvania newspaper The Clearfield Progress, and picked up by Raymond Chandler the next year and used in The Big Sleep.

These tidbits are mainly based on Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book, Phraseology. Where other sources are used, they will be given. Observations from other sources are quite welcome, preferably with the source identified.

 

[sr71plt]

I'll tell you what you think

The term "second guess," meaning to criticize the decisions of others after the event, derived from what is known as "back formation." The phrase originates from American baseball (of course). Umpires were once impolitely nicknamed "guessers." And this "guesser" term is what "second guess" backed into. One who questioned an umpire's call, as coined in a definition published in the Sporting News Record Book in 1937, was called a "second guesser."

A later use of the term, coined by Broadcasting magazine in 1941, means to anticipate what others might do in a situation.

These tidbits are mainly based on Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book, Phraseology. Where other sources are used, they will be given. Observations from other sources are quite welcome, preferably with the source identified.

 

[sr71plt]

What's your take?

The origin of the phrase, "loud and fumpy," can be traced to event designer Danny Boyle on 27 July 2012 in his characterization of what he wanted the opening ceremony of the 2012 London summer Olympics to be like. As near as I can figure, the phrase means a confluence of haphazard, fun, weird, creepy, provincial, cheeky, "hey what?" and overdesigned.

Perhaps you have definitions of your own, though.

 

[PennLady]

The origin of the phrase, "loud and frumpy," can be traced to event designer Danny Boyle on 27 July 2012 in his characterization of what he wanted the opening ceremony of the 2012 London summer Olympics to be like. As near as I can figure, the phrase means a confluence of haphazard, fun, weird, creepy, provincial, cheeky, "hey what?" and overdesigned.

Perhaps you have definitions of your own, though.

I think it should include, if it didn't, odd hats.

 

[LettersFromTatyana]

The origin of the phrase, "loud and fumpy," can be traced to event designer Danny Boyle on 27 July 2012 in his characterization of what he wanted the opening ceremony of the 2012 London summer Olympics to be like. As near as I can figure, the phrase means a confluence of haphazard, fun, weird, creepy, provincial, cheeky, "hey what?" and overdesigned.

Perhaps you have definitions of your own, though.

Wait, I thought it was loud and thumpy?

 

[sr71plt]

I think I'll go with Danny Boyle's assessment in his after-ceremony interview: It all went "tickety-boo."

 

[PennLady]

I think I'll go with Danny Boyle's assessment in his after-ceremony interview: It all went "tickety-boo."

LOL I heard that, too. Loved it. And considering Boyle's previous movies, like Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, I was pleased to see a lack of zombies and drug addicts in horrid toilets.

Well, okay, I missed the zombies. And triffids would have been fun

 

[sr71plt]

And the same to you

The expression "tickety-boo," meaning "it's all OK," is often claimed to originate in in Scotland, where there's a children's song titled "Everything Is Tickety-Boo," sung by Danny Kaye in the 1958 movie Merry Andrew. Others trace it to the Hindi "tikai babu," "it's all right, sir," whereupon the English colonialists in India brought it home in the nineteenth century.

These tidbits are mainly based on Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book, Phraseology. Where other sources are used, they will be given. Observations from other sources are quite welcome, preferably with the source identified.

 

[sr71plt]

Mix it up

The origin of the phrase, "variety is the spice of life" (the motto of we bisexuals), meaning diversity makes like interesting, is traced back to William Cowper's 1785 poem, "The Task" ("Variety is the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor."

These tidbits are mainly based on Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book, Phraseology. Where other sources are used, they will be given. Observations from other sources are quite welcome, preferably with the source identified.