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“He was a-being werry obstropolous”
This morning, my mum described someone to me as ‘obstropolous’. I WTF’d at this and she insisted it was a word that describes someone who ‘makes life difficult for the sake of it’.
I told her it sounded like a made-up surname designed to mock the Greek.
So, she went off to work doubtful that this word she has always used is actually real, and I just remembered to google it up. Turns out it’s a joke word derived from the actual word ‘obstreperous’.
I found an interesting little piece about Australian words which talks about this, and it’s quite enlightening.
The same problem has arisen with obstropolous – another word which my father used but which I somehow twigged was a joke word for obstreperous. Obstropolous children sound so much worse than obstreperous ones. But not all of us, particularly when we first hear these words as children, realise that there is a joke attached to their use. In a child’s accepting way we assume that this is a real word, serious and acceptable, that we are dealing with. That assumption can stay with us for life – or at least until someone points out to us the error of our ways. I had a letter from a school principal who had used obstropolous all his life, no doubt to children who richly deserved it, and who had in retirement caught up with the word obstreperous whose existence he had never suspected.
The obstropolous joke is of long-standing. It goes back in British English to the disdain with which speakers of standard British English regarded speakers of dialect. You can see the caption in Punch – British Bobby: `But your honour, he was a‑being werry obstropolous’. This joke against the ignorant became a cliche.
It’s made me wonder when and where my mother heard ‘obstropolous’ in her lifetime for her to continue to use it and believe it to be a serious word. This morning was the first time I’d ever heard it and it sounded utterly ridiculous to me - I was sure she was mispronouncing something, and it turns out I was nearly there.
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Finnish profanity →
inky:
Beautiful.
I think I love Finnish now.
Vittujen kevät ja kyrpien takatalvi! (paraphrased, “Oh fucking shit!” or literally “The spring of cunts and the late winter of dicks!”)
Such fucking eloquence!
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Ritual killing by sardonic grin: a new discovery
By the eighth century B.C., Homer had coined the term “sardonic grin”—”sardonic” having its roots in “Sardinia”—in writings referring to the island’s ritual killings via grimace-inducing potion.
I’m ashamed to admit that I never knew the origins of the term till now
Me too… but I believe the awesomeness of the origin overrides our shame.
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Creating Good Work Habits
My main ‘thing’ seems to be listening to foreign music - that is, non-english lyrics. Of course, this manifests as anything from Norwegian black metal to Mediaeval Baebes to slightly odder fake language songs as made by E.S.Posthumus.
I think I’m going to be stuck once I learn Norwegian, Middle English, and Mediaeval Latin though - it’s only a matter of time, I listen to those languages most often!
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bork bork bork
Rare owl convalescing in southern Sweden - The Local
For all you owl fans. And you should feel sorry for the poor thing; it’s stuck in Skåne in the south of Sweden where people speak in an incomprehensible manner.
You say that as if there are parts of Sweden where people don’t speak incomprehensibly!
edit: I have been educated!
<Arood> brilliantology: skånska is not swedish :[
<Arood> skånska is more danish than swedish, so it’s even hard for swedes to understand wtf they’re saying
<Arood> btw, this is the machine we will remove skåne with: http://bortmedskane.istheshit.net/ -
(via stuffparty, bullshit)
