Glass, too, which I guess is kind of between metal and stone. ‘Slag glass’ lamp shades, for example, are those milky offwhite panels that were probably manufacturing mistakes when first invented. Lumps of old melted glass bottles, windows from fires get called slag and lasts pretty much forever underwater, underground, where ever it gets dumped.
Brings to mind my favorite British insult. ‘She’s minging for England’.
Minging is a verb to mean ‘to be ugly’. I love that it’s a verb.
She is capable of competing in this endeavour at the international level.
Yeah, they’re still there. And to add a little context, it’s hardly the only offensively titled strip in Viz. Eh, I’ll spoiler. (Very) Offensive and NSFW.
currently
Cockney Wanker
The Real Ale Twats
Meddlesome Ratbag
Johnny Fartpants
and historically
Tranny Magnet
The Thieving Gypsy Bastards (That one caused a question in the House Of Commons)
Full disclosure: for some reason my son bought me a copy of the annual for Xmas. Viz is incredibly uneven - some of those are every bit as puerile and childish as you would imagine, living on a single weak joke for years; on the other hand (for example), one of the writers is a big fan of John Betjeman (the poet), and has produced a couple of pastiches which have made me literally cry with laughter. It is what it is.
j
ETA: it is actually of some relevance to this discussion, and Viz is, to some extent, satirizing the culture where the use of the word S*** would be the norm.
I forgot to add I wouldn’t have any idea slag was naughty. Beside the metal-volcano-glazier use, I thought it was made up for Simpsons.
I play various word games on my phone, and whether “rape” and its variations (“raping”, et al.) are allowed varies across games. When it’s disallowed, it makes Canola fans very unhappy.
Disallowing perfectly valid words that a newspaper will happily publish seems pretty silly to me. Yeah, maybe skip some/most/all of the Seven, but “slag” and “rape”?!
Slag is from the Proto-Germanic word for ‘hit’. Slag means ‘hit’ in Swedish; slagverk (hit work) means ‘percussion’ in music. It’s related to slay, sley, slaughter, Schlachthof Fünf, and Schlager (the last-named referring to “hit” songs).
That’s an awfully violent background for that word.
The good people of the Australian mining centre of Broken Hill, where Slag Street sits at the middle of the town, are all aghast. To be fair, it borders the giant Line of Load - a 50 metre high, 7.5 km-long, and 1.6 km-deep mullock and slag heap, that is to the town what the Fuji is to the Japanese psyche.
I knew about “slag off” as a verb and have even used it. But I never heard of it as a derogatory noun applied to women until today.
I would be very surprised if “slag” was ever considered a prohibited word in a UK paper. Use of “s**g” is more likely a form of dog whistle, where everyone knew what it meant, but papers directed at a lower intellect might simply use asterisks for effect. It makes a headline look more shocking. Shocking is the daily bread of such papers.
That would be my sense of this, as well.
It’s about t*tillation.
Did you not look at the link?
Cite? I never heard of that.
I remember the strip. I thought it was attacking the stereotype, not the people. I still read the comic.
IIRC there was a follow-up strip in the same, or next issue shoeing gypsies as very nice people.
What is a “gonic”? None of the Google hits make sense for something a cat can be made into.
It also means “stinking”, at least in some parts of the country.
You’ve misread “gonk”
Brits use shag and tit as naughty terms for birds, when they could easily employ Latin names.
Such puerile behavior.
My mistake - it was a complaint by the United Nations rather than the House of Commons - my failing memory, I’m afraid.
Reported in The Times, which I would like to think was reasonably authoritative:
4 Nov 2009 — On one infamous occasion Viz was taken to task by the United Nations … The Thieving Gypsy Bastards
Source, which surprisingly doesn’t seem to be paywalled
Other sources give more of the story. Google “the thieving gypsy bastards” united nations
j.
I would not characterize Viz as a lad’s mag, it’s a satirical comic more in the vein of Mad Magazine except parodying UK comics and charaters.
Lad’s mags are things like Nuts, FHM and Maxim.
I remember I was surprised to learn that minging and minge are unrelated.
I assume such a thing as a minging minge exists, but I’ve never been close to one.