Sounds nasty. You get a groin strain?
And SmartAleq writes: “Back in Time for Tea actually went in depth about the origins of trainspotting as apparently it was quite a thing and kept the kiddies busy. The modern day kid was politely but firmly ‘meh’ on the subject, however.”
Being British, and a devotee of railways, I can confirm SmartAleq’s post: “trainspotting” was a very big thing in the UK, over about the fifteen or twenty years immediately following World War II (it waned with the phasing-out of steam locomotives on Britain’s railways in the 1960s). In its heyday, probably at least half the boys in Britain under adolescent age, were into it: it was fostered as a healthy interest for lads of that age (the railway hobby as a whole, has always been an almost totally male pursuit) – with little books of all the numbers of all different types of locomotive, published and cheaply on sale. Genuine trainspotters are now far fewer in number than 60 / 70 years ago, but they still exist, over a wide range of ages.
I was born at the ripest time to have been swept up in this phenomenon; however, I’ve always loved trains and railways, but was never a trainspotter – am borderline innumerate, and numbers and figures for their own sake, have never held joy or meaning for me. I’ve long had the impression that the US has many railway enthusiasts (“railfans”); but seemingly the juvenile number-spotting craze never took hold there.
Taking further, pulykamell’s bird-watching analogy: one could – without wishing to be too unkind to followers of, in themselves, benign and harmless pastimes – draw a parallel “trainspotters and more-generalist railway enthusiasts / ‘twitchers’ and serious birders”: the term “twitcher” being popular in those circles, to refer to the rather tunnel-vision-afflicted birding sub-set who zealously go to great lengths to see birds of as many different species as possible, but are interested in this collecting mission, rather than in any other aspects of birds: once they’ve seen a whatever-it-is and ticked it off on their list, they couldn’t care less if the species were then to go extinct.
As indicated upthread, trendy folk who despise nerds / geeks / followers of perceived kid-type hobbies, enjoy using “trainspotter / trainspotting” as an alternative to “anorak”, as contemptuous epithets re railway enthusiasts and all other hobbyists who do not measure up to their criterion of right-on-ness.
Oddly enough, what with schoolboys (especially adolescent ones) being a highly dirty-minded lot: the expression was mostly used quite innocently, without sexual / genital connotations being brought in !
Ahem. Parts of South Africa, I first heard it in Cape Town, never heard it in Durban and I grew up there.
I once got a similar reaction at what’s called a zastolya in Russian. My friends and I were gathered around a big table having a holiday dinner, and for some reason I don’t remember, I let out a Charlie Brown–type Bleah!
What I didn’t know at the time is the Blya! is an interjection or particle roughly equal to “Fuck!” or “fucking.” It can be inserted pretty much anywhere in sentence:
*So blya, this **blya **cop stopped me and **blya **said I was **blya **speeding and **blya **gave me a **blya *ticket! :mad:
Like this? :o
I’m watching the Canadian sitcom Corner Gas right now. Wanda just went to IKEA to buy a “hutch” for her office.
To me, a “hutch” is the cage(s) in which farmers keep rabbits for food. In CG, it’s what I would call “cubby holes” on top of a desk to hold different papers, staplers, scissors, whatever.
Is this usage common elsewhere?
I’m in the US and am familiar with both rabbit hutches for keeping rabbits, and desk top shelves called hutches.
In the US, a “hutch” can be either a cage for rabbits or a piece of furniture with shelves placed on top of a lower unit with a counter/desktop and cabinets. A hutch might be part of a desk or a china cabinet or a dresser.
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What’s a starsky then?
Huh, I’m in the US, and I’ve never heard of a “hutch” being anything other than a rabbit cage.
If railways were as ubiquitous and super important to our way of life in the US as they are in UK, I’m sure we’d have trainspotters too.
I’m in the US and I am familiar with both uses of the word, but the furniture one moreso. Wikipedia claims it’s an American English term.
Yes, we have trainspotters in the U.S. but we don’t call ourselves 
that. We’re railfans or train buffs, and rude people call us “foamers” (figuratively foaming at the mouth on seeing an interesting train). There’s enough to support two monthly printed magazines, Trains and Railfan & Railroad, even in the internet age.
I’m not a complete anorak on the subject, but I do have a favorite train engine (Southern Pacific 4449, to be precise) and I’ll go find any steam train ride I can possibly afford. Love me some trains, yup!
I just discovered that the term “moolie,” which on the Left Coast US is basically a milder form of “dumbass” is a definite racial slur in the south and on the East Coast. Related to “eggplant,” which I was aware of–and to make things even more interesting, sending someone an eggplant emoji is slang for penis. How’s that for confusement?
I think you are slightly confused. Bib overalls and overalls are the same thing.
Where coveralls are what a grease-monkey mechanic would wear. Although, as seen on that page, you can get insulated coveralls which are great for winter weather. My parents would get me and my brother a new pair every year. My dad would wear them to work all the time since he worked outside. He wasn’t a mechanic though.
I’m from New York and I don’t know if I’ve ever heard “moolie” before. If I had to guess, I would think it was some kind of 1930s era gangster slang.
Biballs? Never heard that before! It sounds a bit…well…silly, really.
This reminds me of a book…
The Ruby Knight, book 2 of the Elenium, by David Eddings. The knight Sir Bevier is in thrall to some kind of succubus, and his friends break down the door to his bedroom in the castle to find:
“The room was filled with an eerie light. Bevier lay tossing on his bed, and over him hovered the misty, glowing shape of a naked woman.”
Thing is, if he’d written “tossing and turning”, it wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow, but “tossing” means masturbating - the mild insult ‘tosser’ basically means the same thing as wanker - and with the naked lady… well, maybe they should have left him to his alone time.
Italian, apparently, and we had independent confirmation that the negative definition is alive and well in the south too.