In today’s column concerning versions of “tag”, Cecil brings up the English version, where the person tagged has caught “lurgy fever” and gets rid of it by touching the next target.
According to WordOrigins,
Perhaps, but “the lurgies”, sometimes “the dreaded lurgies and the plinge” turned up from time to time on the highly-esteemed Goon show. Ying-tong-iddle-i-po to all, and hope the batter puddings don’t bite!!
How weird. Not ten minutes ago I was reading the British New Scientist magazine. It had a cartoon about a new drug that couldn’t be released because all the side-effects were so old-fashioned. One of them was lurgy. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered the word before and had no idea what it meant.
In that context, therefore, what is “gyp”?
Something that’s giving you gyp is something that aches, like your back or your feet.
Could it be Fr. la grippe, aka the grip, as in, the flu?
And, lest anyone worry that it’s a naughty word, it is believed to be derived from a dialect use of “gee-up”.
I understand “giving me gyp” as referring to the constant/repetitive nature of the pain or irritation - also capable of metaphorical application, of course.
Wasn’t this a Spike Lee movie?
I always thought Lurgy was a nonsense word The Goon Show made up.
Or maybe Spike Milligan. I’m always getting those two mixed up.
Spike Milligan was from an Irish family, so it’s not impossible he used a word he’d heard in childhood. Or who knows, it might have been circulating in the Army as slang for any unspecified disease.
Yeah, lurgy. A malady that does not have a diagnostic name, mostly an upper respiratory infection that lays you low but does not threaten to kill you.
I get lurgies…when everyone else claims they have THE FLU, or worse.
Wankers.