Spambot of the day
This one puzzled me at first:
I am glad to be a visitant of this sodding site.
Until I looked it up. I believe it’s British.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
This one puzzled me at first:
I am glad to be a visitant of this sodding site.
Until I looked it up. I believe it’s British.
Yep. From sodomite.
Bit rude, what?
Ah, you don’t watch enough low-class British sitcoms like I do; otherwise you would have told them to “sod off!”
Or bugger off.
Years ago I was working with some British lawyers and they had trouble understanding my Americanisms like “ride heard in them”. But I got even when I spotted one of them writing “it’s plain as a pikestaff” in a legal brief!
Wanker.
Give me a sodding fag, you bugger!
I have spent several decades reading military fiction including the Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell and of course the characters use sod and sodding along with bloody as curse words. Lot of colorful words used for centuries by folks in the British Isles.
“You old sod” and “you old bugger ” can be affectionate in UK parlance as in
“How are you, you old sod?”.
Talking of “plain as a pikestaff” would the phrase “beyond the pale” be understood in the US?
Probably by what is called an Asian in England, eh wot?
Because of the “visitant”. Ordinary Brits are unlikely to use that word,IMO.
Swear words rarely translate well. We hardly ever use them connected to their meaning, and we can’t translate their intensity or affront. I only recently learned that saying f-ck is like breathing in England, but c-nt is the off-limits word.
I think we’re going through a linguistic shock these days caused by instant international communication. A lot of foreigners, English-speaking or otherwise, use f-ck casually. I don’t think we have a go-to “this is the most offensive thing I can say” word right now in the US. Even “MF” has lost its intensity due to the commonness of “F”.
I with this blog had more articles about proper yard maintenance.
Nick, just tell them to get off your lawn.
There is an old story about the librettist W. S. Gilbert explaining the importance of using the right idioms for the desired reaction, even though the actual words might, in fact, be synonyms.
“Gilbert’s response to being told they (the words ‘ruddy’ and ‘bloody’) meant the same thing was: “Not at all, for that would mean that if I said that I admired your ruddy countenance, which I do, I would be saying that I liked your bloody cheek, which I don’t.”
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/218729-gilbert-s-response-to-being-told-they-the-words-ruddy-and
As a New Englander long resident in Australia I like Frog’s analysis. Visitant is peculiar usage that someone from the
subcontenent might use and the use of sodding is is also slightly off – too general – making it seem like your commenter wasn’t the full quid when it comes to the Queen’s English.
The use of visitant as a noun creates some extraordinary images. He just said he is sodding supernatural! Spooky.
vis·it·ant
[ˈvizədənt]
NOUN
literary
a supernatural being or agency; an apparition.