Another Voice

David Short

I remember a word for the small dried bits of excrement from my teenage years in the North East. It was 'winnet'. I don't think we need the word any more with the much more prevalent daily shower or bath and more hot water and bathrooms, rather than weekly tin baths.

As for nonebrity, I like it, but I remember the Evening Standard some years ago inventing 'waif' - why am I famous?

And you don't need a male version of nymphomaniacs as most men are sex-mad. The small minority who aren't can be referred to as 'non-combatants'.

Bean Counter

On your Britain point - I learned this lesson the hard way in Belfast a couple of years ago. I was asked what I was planning for the weekend amd replied 'I'm going back to the UK', to which the response was 'You're IN the UK', expressed with a surprising amount of passion. Given that we live in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island, I'd say 'Team GB' is some way off the mark.

Life's Too Short

A pedant writes: GSOH is not an acronym, because it cannot be pronounced (unlike NATO and radar, say). It's an abbreviation.

Lesley

Perhaps there should also be a word for the time-wasting habit of making this sized article into four pages of web page. E-longation ?

David Short

Lesley, yes, it is a pain and says little (or a lot) about the skills of the webmasters here.

Even short columns such as Low and High Life run into three pages.

David Short

But you CAN have Team GB because you get all-Ireland teams, so GB makes sense if there are no Irish.

Great Britain includes Scotland, whereas Britain does not.

In the past, Scotland was sometimes referred to as North Britain.

Fergus Pickering

'Smirr' has not fallen from use. I used it myself in a poem published and republished. Since I was brought up in Scotland it may ell be a Scots word. My spelling is correct. Please use the word as soon as you can.

Fergus Pickering

Heavens, here I am again. Those pesky Scots say 'the morn' for tomorrow, and 'the morn's morn' for the day after tomorrow. 'Tomorrow's tomorrow' would be an equivalent.

David Moss

1. Asked (one reader tells me) what might be the English equivalent of the French sensibilité, Lord Palmerston replied ‘humbug’ ...

2. Which brings me to my favourite letter, from a man in neighbouring Staffordshire. ‘Most needed,’ he writes, ‘is an adjective for the pitiful tripe that managements use to try to jolly along their staff.’ ... My correspondent comes up with his own suggestion for the right word: ‘bullshit’.

which reminds me that

3. According to John Lennon, avant garde is just French for bullshit.

David Moss

Lesley
August 14th, 2008 9:23pm

Perhaps there should also be a word for the time-wasting habit of making this sized article into four pages of web page. E-longation ?

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I think the idea is that we might read lots of advertisements as we click from page to page -- so, "adlongation"?

Alec Ryrie

Great Britain includes Scotland, whereas Britain does not.

In the past, Scotland was sometimes referred to as North Britain.

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No: Britain has always been a term either for a Roman province or for the whole island.

'Great Britain' was a medieval usage to distinguish this island from Brittany - the original 'Little Britain'. Interestingly, the British have now largely abandoned 'Great' but most Americans still use it. I remember once telling an American that I was from Britain, and he replied, 'Britain? Is that Great Britain? Or some other Britain?' He was joking, obviously ... but then 'Great' does feel a bit of a claim now, doesn't it?

Sadly, the main word that most of the world uses for the UK is 'England'.

David Short

But I maintain it's true that in the 19th and early 20th century, sometimes Scotland was called 'North Britain'.

As Scotland was never part of Roman Britain, that makes even more sense.

This is all beginning to remind me of the conversation between Jerry and George in 'Seinfeld' when they start puzzling over Holland, the Netherlands, and the Dutch.

David Moss

"The North Briton" was the name of John Wilkes's newspaper, of which he had published 45 issues before the powers that be descended on him.

There are lacunae in our vocabulary, true, but also in our public life. What would we give for another John Wilkes now?

Imagine the mess he would make of Gordon Brown – that arch North Briton. And David Miliband! And perhaps even that politician Matthew Parris described in the Times less than a year ago as potentially a puffball and a jellyfish.

Brian Fleming

Matthew,

You mention the lack of "a term for our country". This is, of course, due to the highly idiosyncratic nature of the 'Ukanian' state, unitary by name, but not by nature.

My late father (a Scot) and my mother (originally English), when visiting me here in Finland, where I have lived for many years, used to refer to "This Country". They did not use this term in reference to wherever they happened to be at the time, but purely as a proper noun when referring to 'home'. I have always found this an infuriating habit, being of a somewhat pedantic nature myself. However, I have since noticed others doing this too. I do not know if it is specific to residents of Scotland who do not want to (or are unable to) specify whether they mean Scotland, Britain, GB, UK ,or whatever at each utterance. I have a feeling it is probably used more widely.

Iain Shepherd

You don't really need a Jamaican term for the dried excrement that can cling to the hairs around the anus. My father tells me about the Aberdeenshire term "knapdarloch" which is, according to the on-line Scots dictionary a knotted piece of dirt or dung etc. hanging on the fur of an animal or a dirty or cheeky person ". The word, like the dialect itself, is unfortunately dying out. Even a semi-retired old farmer that I know hadn't heard of the term although some of his friends had. My son says that the Italian word is "tarzanelli" which is presumably of much newer origin.

Tim Standbrook

Just a thought following from Jamaican Rasclats, we often at university used to refer to those stubborn to remove bits after a good dump, quite pictorially and usually in a human context, as "Dangleberries". Being brought up in the Star Trek era, they were also known as "Clingons". Of course, "Clingons" would never have presented their alien menace, if it weren't for "Winnits" (anal hair) to cling on to.