In third grade, I sat across from a guy whose name was Earnest. He complained that nearly every teacher he had (up to that time, it was only four teachers) misspelled it as “Ernest”.
So he insisted on the importance of being Earnest?
Yeah, I guess so!
Lost track of that guy after 6th grade. He was nice, but we moved on to different junior highs.
If you see kay
Tell him he may
See you in tea
Tell him from me.
— James Joyce, Ulysses
Never heard so myself as a Brit. I can see the initial letter idea, but it seems a bit far fetched.
Maybe all depends on the tone of voice?
According to Snopes, this gag is falsely attributed to American comedian of the 1960s, Soupy Sales:
Soupy’s playing a game with White Fang in which the dog grunts the alphabet but consistently misidentifies the letter ‘F’ as the letter ‘K’ until Soupy blurts out in mock exasperation: “Everytime I see ‘F,’ you see ‘K’!”
(White Fang was a giant white dog who was always off-camera, and only appeared as two big paws that Soupy interacted with.)
personally I prefer: ‘Well there you are you see’ The way John Cleese would say it
It is interesting that nearly all the " backronyms" - POSH is “port out, starboard home” “Constable on Patrol” are fake.
Acronyms only really came into use during WWII and later. There were a very few earlier ones in WWI. But any claim that a word used before 1900 originated as an acronym is almost certainly false. The only exception that I’m aware of is “OK” which originated around 1840.
It’s not even a deadly insult. In working class British use, twat & cunt are used both as a perjorative and a term of affection (twat less so, but when used as an insult, it is on the level of “idiot”, despite both terms referring to women’s genitalia.) It’s not particularly offensive in of itself, context really matters.
In the above example of a hotel staff member using it: obviously intended to insult. That same staff member at the pub after work offering his mate a pint: not at all insulting, just cameradie. English culture is a bit weird in that area, I feel completely fine using words with my friends that might precipitate a bar fight with strangers.
ROFL! Did the software change your c-word to “idiot”? Be warned, US-ians do not see that word in any way kindly or mildly; it is a declaration of war here.
Different cultures, I guess. See Trainspotting - Mike Begbie’s reaction to some “c***” jostling him.. and the subsequent exchange of words and actions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCv7OyVJyYI (2 mins, 28 sec)
Even given Begbie’s volatile nature, that was a declaration of war.
But insults vary so widely with culture. In Zimbabwe, “pamata pako” is a deadly insult, as is “masende yako”: they translate into the fairly innocuous English phrases “(on) your arse” and “your balls”. Both phrases in chiShona are fighting words.
Culturally, we decide what is massively offensive and what is just joking around friends seemingly at random.
That’s not what’s being discussed here though. Obviously all the stuff about “fornication under consent of the king” and such like is absolute rubbish. But this thread is about an existing term of abuse being made into an acronym in order to make its use more subtle, deniable or funny.
I’m well aware of “see you next Tuesday” but I wouldn’t have known “there we are then”. I googled the original review and there isn’t any more information there. I’m a bit doubtful - there’s lots of context the reviewer is withholding (such as the question of whether they were being an arsehole). I think there’s a fair chance guy with specs said something innocent which the reviewer has chosen to intepret as an insult, for example he might be from Northern Ireland and actually said in a friendly way “that’s us now”.
It’s Francis/Frank/Franco Begbie. I’m not sure what your point is here. Begbie obviously uses “cunt” as an insult here, whereas in other contexts “some cunt” might be one of his friends. However language has very little to do with provoking the attack - he had pretty much already decided it was going to happen when he turned round and tried to barge through the men while holding 4 pints.
Shirley, you can’t be serious …
I strongly suspect that they were.
TIL - I was unaware that this was a thing.
My initial response to the OP was that “There we are then” could be dismissive to the point of being very offensive. Consider an example:
Customer: Exuse me, you’ve given me change for ten pounds - I gave you a twenty.
Barman: No, it was ten
Customer: No, I’m sure I gave you twenty
Barman: Can you prove that?
Customer: Well no, obviously not
Barman: There we are then.
- in this context it’s being used to convey: That’s too f*ing bad then, isn’t it?
But without seeing the fulll review, there’s no way of knowing if this was the case.
j
Me either! But I can now tell the story of one of my most difficult moments in teaching:
As a newbie teacher, I was pretty good with tech, and our horrible principal called me and another male techie teacher into an impromptu meeting. At her old high school, there was a team, the SWAT team, Students Who Assist with Technology, that went around helping staff. Our principal wanted to start something similar at our school, only instead of being Students, it’d be Teachers.
The other teacher and I exchanged a half-second, extremely eloquent side-eye, in which we held an entire conversation confirming we were both parsing the acronym.
Then we faced forward, and through one of the most Herculean efforts of our lives, neither of us giggled.
The full review:
Whoever at this pub responds to reviews isn’t shy about thanking customers for good reviews and blasting them for bad ones, but in this case they didn’t comment, so the circumstances remain a mystery.
To misspell his name once may be regarded as a misfortune. To misspell four times looks like carelessness.