:smack: So that’s why the only person that thought I was acting sensibly was the Orthodox whore I met in shul.
I’m trying to remember if it was used in Altman’s Gosford Park. Surely it was neither an invention of Wodehouse nor of Sayers, but was used by enough people that it could become an easy marker.
Never read about Wimsey, but Uncle Dynamite is a man who I would love to be able to emulate. Just spread sweetness and light wherever I travel.
“Fag” does not mean “cigarette” in Canadian English.
This isn’t everyday usage no matter how you look at it, but it’s worth reading again: the combined double meaning of “current” in the opening of Claudius’s great “O my offense is rank” soliloquy in Hamlet, III:3
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above;
Likewise, when I first started learning German I was taught that gehen = “to go”, or “to walk”; but when years later I spent a university year in Göttingen I noticed the same thing you describe. Nearly everyone I met used laufen to mean “to walk”, and this was much easier for us English native speakers, since we’re used to having different words for “to go” and “to walk”. Not long after that, I learned that the Dutch word lopen also means “to walk”, although to lope in English, presumably related to or borrowed from the Dutch word, has a somewhat different meaning. Be that as it may, we had a lot of North Germans in Göttingen, which led me to assume that using laufen for “walk” was a Platt/northern thing.
I grew up in northeast Ohio, and the “Irish” sense was/is used there.
“I’m going to walk up to the bowling alley.” (about a fifteen-minute walk from home)
“I’m heading that way – if you wait a few minutes, I’ll give you a lift.”
Of course, there are a lot of people of Irish descent in Cleveland and its suburbs (our local Catholic church was St. Brendan’s), so perhaps the phrase was brought over from the “Auld Sod”.
Giving lifts to people is perfectly normal usage in the UK, too. It’s not just Irish.
I’m in the NJ/PA area and I hear “give you a lift” “give me a lift” from time to time so I’d say this usage is pretty common in the US. I think most people would understand it, even if they’d never used the term in this way themselves.
They entrance.
Further north the modern parlance for ‘pants’ is ‘sub standard’
and loose change is ‘shrapnel’
Yeah, I’m not in your part of the country but I’ve heard “give me a lift” before and it doesn’t strike me as confusing or odd. “Give me a ride” is probably more common, but I don’t think “give me a lift” seems foreign at all.
Well, I had an Aussie I know translate this. She told me it always makes her smile when she reads about fans rooting for a team.
It made me think of another dirty/embarrassing Brit/US thing:
Are you taking a piss (out of me-- is that necessary?).
Or is it:
Are you taking the piss … ?
Whichever it is, it certainly gave me pause the first few times I heard it in movies.
It means “are you pulling my leg”–but I don’t know if you say it only when you are really angry.
Little help?
It’s taking the piss. I’d say you’re usually a bit angry when using it as a question, but not necessarily.
How did her translation match up with mine (as another Australian)?
To waffle (in Ireland, maybe UK I dunno) means to talk incessantly or nonsensically, or a bit of both.
To waffle (in the US) means to say one thing then say its opposite, as far as I’ve been able to ascertain. I’ve only seen it used in the context of politicians. Correct me if I’m wrong.
When I’m doing this, in my wife’s opinion, she’ll tell me to stop plappeling.
She says it’s Yiddish, which she spoke growing up. The word makes me laugh so I usually knock it off. Usually.
In a non-political context, it can mean to be indecisive.
In Indiana our roads are so full of potholes there is no pavement left
UK roads are for vehicles, pavements are for people, oh and prams and pushcarts, wheelchairs, etc.
So what do they use to mean what we mean by pavement. That is the stuff that makes any path whether for vehicles or pedestrians hard and smooth.