As in, not look for something, or look at something, or look through something, but to “look something”.
I’m sure I’ve not heard it any sooner than the last few months, but all of a sudden my boss at work started asking “Are you looking me?”, people email me stating they’re “looking a password reset”, ads online tell me that someone is “looking a TV”.
I can’t stand this and I’ve no idea who passed around the idea that it was the done thing. Hearing someone say “'bout ye” I can say that they’ve watched an advert for a pretty crappy beer. But I’ve no idea where this one came from and it’s starting to drive me nuts :smack:
I haven’t heard that and I hope I never do. Between hearing “ask” used as a noun and “hot” used as a verb, I have enough trouble keeping my impulses under control :mad:
My Irish wife uses “hot up” (as in, "Please hot up the kettle) and it makes me wince. That being said, my heart flutters a little when she says “amn’t.”
“That’s a big ask”, i.e., that’s asking a lot. It’s used all the time in Ireland and it makes me cringe.
Daithi Lacha I haven’t heard that particular usage of it, but the Irish media frequently refer to political and sporting competitions with phrases along the lines of “the race for _____ is hotting up”.
I thought “big ask” was an import. I find it jarring, it sounds like dodgy office-speak. I’ve not heard the “look something” in the OP. I hear the word random about 5 times a day on the bus though.
Just so I’m clear, I wouldn’t use ‘hot up’ in proper speech; instead I’d use ‘warm up’ or ‘heat up’. In casual speech, where I’m prone to using all kinds of various dialects - typically a mixture of Nottinghamese, poggardi jib and Jamaican patois, with other wee bits picked up from all over the place - standard grammatical rules get taken (or as I’d say, ‘tooken’) out back and shot in the head.
James Cagney told a story about a time when someone asked “how do you go about joining this ‘Irish mafia’ (the circle Cagney ran with in Hollywood; Pat O’Brien, Spencer Tracy, Frank Morgan, others) of yours?” and was told by Morgan(?) “you don’t go about it; you are asked”, to which another added “and we’ve run out of asks”.
To ‘look’ something is commonly used in Ireland (or Northern Ireland, at any rate) to mean ‘to look for’ or, more precisely, ‘to want.’ As in, ‘Are you looking a drink?’ People said it when I was a kid - it’s not new. Nor is ‘bout ye’, by the way - well established saying, a bit corny and old-fashioned now.
Oh for the love of pasta, it’s coming to the US. A car that parks near mine at work has a vanity plate “bout ye.” I thought it was something canadian. Glad that was cleared up.
My favourite is the F-word used as a destination.
As in: “Tell them to get out to f**k!” (Go away)
Pushkin, are these the kind of people who ask if there is a situation?
It’s a pretty common way of phrasing things in ceertain parts of norn irn “looking a wee word”, “looking a night out” etc. and it annoys me too.
sinjin- my favourite Northern Irish vanity plate said “NEE KAP”. As I saw it in the car park of a hospital the question arose in my mind…does it belong to an orthopaedic surgeon, or a paramilitary who had kneecapped someone?
