According to Etymology Online, it’s from an old phrase.
I wonder what they were called before that. Maybe fringe like everyone else.
Non-US Dopers: Please Share Any US Culture References You Didn't *Get* from Exported American TV/Mov
There’s a section in one of the Little House on the Prairie books that talks about how Laura wants bangs, and her parents refer to them as a “lunatic fringe.” I found that section excerpted online, and the author uses both terms in the passage pretty much interchangeably. (I remember reading it as a kid and not really having any idea WTF they were talking about with “fringe.”)
The books were written in the 1930s, IIRC, but the setting was the 1870s-1880s.
Excerpt here if anyone is interested.
If you find the answers in this thread interesting, you’ll probably also get a kick out of this tangentially related link: What facts about the US do foreigners not believe until they come to America?
If you scroll down to “Related Questions” they ask the same question, but for various other countries. Interesting stuff.
Ah-ha! Is he the commercial dude who shocked everyone by dying unexpectedly a couple of years ago at a fairly young age? :dubious:
I haven’t lived in the US for more than 20 years now, and the last time I visited was for the so-called “Millennium” in 1999 (it wasn’t). I spend a lot of time in Canada now, though (instead of Europe), so I guess I know who you mean, even though I didn’t know his name.
Or maybe they just weren’t in vogue. Are they ever seen in portraits previous to the mentioned time period?
I could never ask for either. Social inhibitions wouldn’t allow it, especially for the first one. Those words will never escape my mouth.
For a long time I had no idea what Q-Tips were (“You’ve got to stop the Q-Tip when it meets resistance”), but then I looked it up. Now I know.
It took me until I visited to realise that the US uses entree to refer to the main course, and not the starter.
Not TV or movies but music. I had no idea that the song by De La Soul, The Magic Number was basically sampled from Schoolhouse Rock. Apparently every American would have heard of that, but I never did.
Of course, this works in reverse. We Americans who’ve watched British comedies are often baffled by references to assorted British celebs, TV shows, politicians or locales.
As a nerdy teen watching Monty Python, I never understood why people laughed at references to “Reginald Maudling.”* I sometimes figured out that the Pythons were trying to impersonate particular British newscasters or talk show hosts, but never knew who they were or whether the impersonations were accurate.
And there were all kinds of jokes about various London suburbs that I didn’t get. In the “Nudge Nude” sketch, the stiff businessman played by Terry Jones seemed to crack up the audience when he said his wife “sometimes goes. She’s from Purley.”
No idea what life is like in Purley, or why that was funny. Not that it would help much if I DID know!
Never understood what was supposed to be funny about Notlob (er, I mean Bolton) or Luton, either.
- I know today who Maudling was, but that still doesn’t make any of the jokes funnier
I tried to read that link but it required access to my gmail or facebook account, and that isn’t kosher.
I don’t quite get what you mean by this. Do those phrases have some other meaning where you’re from?
Behold Billy Mays.
The whole homecoming queen thing and the over-elaborated significance of high school football is really difficult for me to comprehend.
Define “understand”. A lot of references to sports or media are understood as “reference to sports” or “must be some sort of media celebrity”, but their full meaning, the implications of mentioning, say, Rush Limbaugh versus Dan Savage, are things that I get thanks to the Dope and to several years living in the US.
One of the problems found in translation is that of when it is more “true to the original” to be more literal or to adapt the text. Part of the reason Fresh Prince of Bel-Air did as well as it did in many dubbing locations is that they dared go for the adapted version: people who would never have recognized the name Oprah knew perfectly well who la Campos was (she pretty much created the morning talk show genre in Spain, about the time Fresh Prince first aired). I understand, and maybe other Dopers from dubbing locations can confirm or deny it, that similar adaptations were the general policy for that show; in general, the dubbings choose literalness over adaptation. You get mentions of Dr Phil with no indication about whether he’s a guy with a show on healthcare, a character from a hospital-set show or the host of a talk show.
It’s like hockey without sticks.
It’s really a regional thing. Around here few who have kids in high school have more than a passing interest in high school football. The stands are rarely full even when it’s one of the best schools in the state. It seems like there is a direct corollation between living in a middle of fucking nowhere place with nothing to do but tip cows and the importance of high school football.
Yup, that’s him. He died 4 years ago, at age 50. Initial reports suggested his death might’ve been related to a blow to the head he’d suffered the previous day when the flight he was on had a rough landing, but it turned out to be heart disease.
I was puzzled the first time I came across the phrase “college fund” (in the comic Foxtrot, I think). I figured out what it meant from the context, but the concept was really weird.
Having lived in England for a time, I think suburbs generally have a reputation as sleepy, stuffy places populated by upper-middle class twits who aspire to become full upper-class twits. (Not unlike in the US, though I did catch a PBS documentary on the decline of the suburbs not so long ago.)
“Notlob” is funny simply because Palin tried to pass it off as a palindrome when it plainly isn’t, and Cleese caught him out on it.
One Python reference I still do not get to this day is the one used by Eric Idle in the faux documentary where gangsters were trying to shake down the Manchester City Council (I think it was) and for the first time found themselves outclassed.
Have I got it right? Is Manchester a particularly rough city, or is there something about the MCC that’s especially corrupt? Or have I missed the point entirely? 