I believe it was in a different Wodehouse novel after all, maybe Let Psmith Do It–which I also seem to have lost! (The number of books I have “lost” in recent years, despite having no recollection of intentionally donating or discarding them, mounts and mounts.) However, the passage exists somewhere in Wodehouse and the dialog is between Lady Constance Keeble and Rupert (“The Efficient”) Baxter. IIRC it’s connected in some way with the throwing of flowerpots.
Do you capitalize the words Plaintiff and Defendant? That might have something to do with the American practice; by capitalizing those words, they become proper nouns in a way, like names. IANAL so I don’t know what’s customary in this regard. But in terms of how I perceive the language, either of these look slightly odd to me:
in contrast to:
(All examples are assumed not to be the beginning of the sentence.)
No way is that normal British English, and I do not believe that it ever was. Like most of the other examples of the British allegedly not using articles where Americans would have them (“Put kettle on.”:rolleyes:), it is just wrong. It sounds as odd to my British ears as it no doubt does to your American ones. If it not your memory that is at fault, I would suggest that the most likely explanation is a typographical error in the book.
Wodehouse characters, of course, do have their own peculiar dialect, one that, probably, no real British person ever spoke. That is part of the humor. However, this is so deviant from ordinary British English that I do not believe Wodehouse would have deliberately put it into the mouth of one of his characters.
Well, “SCTV is now on the air!”, but the red sign at the back of every radio studio I’ve ever seen on tv simply says “ON AIR”, so …
Here in Tucson, there’s actually a gas station downtown that has the word “petrol” in its name and all its prices and pumps and stuff. The weird thing is it’s not British themed or anything, it’s almost offensively trying to pander to Southwest American culture (as much as the southwest has a distinct culture). I’ve always wanted to ask what was up with that.
I’ve heard “lift” used in the US before for “elevator”, but usually only specific elevators. While saying “I’m taking the lift” is odd, I wouldn’t bat an eye at “maintenance lift” or “freight lift”. Though I hotel in LA I stayed at on Monday insisted on using “lift” to mean escalator, cue me wandering around for 5 minutes trying to find the damned elevator they were telling me to use until they pointed me to the escalator.
I’ve heard “going to prom” a lot, and it always bugs me. To me it’s “THE prom”, but you mention Homecoming, and oddly I would go “to Homecoming” not “the Homecoming” or “the Homecoming dance” (though I may use the latter for disambiguation with the football game preceding it). On the other hand, I’d go to the Winter Ball, not just “Winter Ball”. This is all very odd and arbitrary.
As for “the university” in English, I’d rarely say it. It’s sort of an in group/out group distinction. 90% of the time when I refer to any location near the university around here I’ll say it’s “on campus” or “near campus.” The “University” part is generally implied. The only time I might say “University” is if I was talking to a tourist or posting on a board like this where I’d say “near the university in town” and say “near the university” for brevity. I may also be more specific if I’m talking to a student enrolled in high school or a community college just so they don’t think I’m talking about their campus. I don’t think I’d just say “university” for any other purpose.
I don’t watch the Big Bang Theory, but from what was said here, if all the parties in the conversation were familiar with Caltech, and the speaker worked there, it would sound off to say they’re going “to the university” or even “to the institute”. Just “I’m heading off to campus” or “I’m going to campus” sounds more natural to me, even if other colleges are around, the one the speaker works at seems implied to me.
I’ve always wondered about a very similar thing in American English which sounds very odd to a UKian like myself:
American English:
Queen’s English:
Where’d the ‘to’ go in the US? The sentence sounds to me like you’re writing the words ‘your Congressman’, or funnier yet, writing on the poor person’s face.
I think the UK does use that construction for “call” and “phone” though, right? E.G. “Remember to call/phone your mom.” (“call her what?” :p)
I wonder if the US just took it further for another form of communication (though then why don’t we use “talk your mom” rather than “talk to your mom”? Who knows).
ETA: It might be an extension of “contact” e.g. “contact your MP/Congressman” which should be fine in both countries.
‘Talk your mom’ sounds like something which ought to be banned.
My grandmother, who is 80, uses this approach on Facebook. I remember her using it when writing postcards and informal letters when I was a kid. She never uses it when speaking, just to minimize writing/typing.
Took dog to vet today.
Picture of John at birthday party.
Stuff like that. Like I said, it really reminds me of her postcards that she used to send me…they really had that “telegraph” feel to them in terms of leaving out articles. I wonder if this was pretty common back in her day…not a ton of 80 year olds on my Facebook friends list to compare her to (she’s a pretty high-tech lady, has an iPhone and a laptop!)
Those are electric signs, though. The wording on signs is usually constrained by space limitations, so the telegraphic style comes into play.
“Leave it to Psmith” contains the flowerpot episode, I believe. Baxter is locked outside at night and starts throwing flowerpots to attract attention. He hits the Earl of Emsworth, who concludes Baxter is potty and refuses to re- hire him.
If it’s a typo it’s showing up in a helluva lot of Wodehouse.
From Mike:
From “The Heart of a Goof”:
And finally, the quote Spectre was discussing, which is actually from Summer Lightning (1929):
Here’s the direct Google Books Link to the phrase in Summer Lightning.
So… yeah. Apparently it was one of Wodehouse’s quirks! Or maybe not. I just did a wider Google Book search and found the phrase, not in telegram / truncated context, in several books pre-1920, for example from this nonfiction epic by Thomas Carlyle from 1858:
Oh, one would, would one? I fear one would sound very odd saying it now. 
(Though I’m surprised that no one offered the most likely potential typo, which would’ve been simply leaving off an ‘s’ – “jumping out of windows” is perfectly cromulent.)
Well I’ll go t’foot of our stairs!
Your exhaustive research is appreciated, I missed this until now.
I wonder if “out of window” was an upper-class dialect expression of the early 20th Century, as Wodehouse’s heritage was decidedly of the aristocracy.
Curiously enough, I just came across another typo in Pigs Have Wings. As Jerry Vail, sometime occupant of the Blandings Castle secretarial chair, he is pleased to learn that the cottage he has just rented was recently vacated by his old friend Admiral J. G. Biffen; if he could go by the notorious tidiness of navel men then he could be sure Biffen left everything in “apple pie order”. Perhaps the Admiral raised oranges on the fantail of his battleship. I don’t know, though, I thought running a fruit ranch tended to be a bit on the dirty side…
For me it’s exactly the opposite. “Wash up” means to wash yourself. If you want me to was something else, give me an object – “Wash the dishes.” Better yet, “Do the dishes.”
Have you ever encountered any confusion over where “town” is? I live in the Midlands, and remember my Dad mentioning to one of his mates, who comes from down South, that he was going “up into town” to Regent Street. The friend was convinced he meant London (many British towns have Oxford and Regent Streets and London Roads) even though we’d refer to that as “going down London” rather than calling it “Town”.
Anyway, the upshot was that we learned that there are still people here who refer to London as “Town”, and the place they lived as “the town”. You’d think it was the other way round, really, that London would be The Town, wouldn’t you?
That’s common in Leicestershire and Derbyshire too (“common” in more than one sense of the word!).
When you’ve heard a gaggle of local lasses in a pub, loudly talking about “gwin’ bed nah” (going to bed now) etc, it drives you a special kind of mental.
I’d suggest earlier than that. I grew up on Wodehouse, from the age of 11 or 12 on; however, concurrently, I grew up in both Edwardian England — Saki, Bennett, Wells, Hitchens, Jacobs, most of whom were — mildly — more obsessed with upper class mores than those of the lower classes except as a mixture of shocked sympathy and careful amusement rather like children giggling at the zoo beholding bright blue hindquarters of certain apes; and even grew up in the late Victorian era previous, reading such as Mrs. Henry Wood, Conan Doyle, Butler, Wilde etc. — nothing you will note, very strenuous or intellectual. A construction such as ‘out of window’ would not have seemed strange at all ( particularly in William de Morgan [ the designer ] portraying middle-class Londoners from the 1850s on, or in Robert Hitchens satirising the upper classes etc. ), and I’d place it as probable in the 18th century on, when many upper class dialects pronounced yellow as yallah etc. and had many shibboleths to trap the unwary, and purposefully progressed to further and further stiltedness during the 19th century in order to emphasise both distance from those even slightly beneath and manly indifference.
In the other hand, not being from that class, for about ten years I imagined another Wodehouse phrase ‘he died trying to leap a five-bar gate’ to mean the old gentleman was taking a running jump at the time,like a gymnast going over the bar, rather than that he was mounted on a horse for hunting and went over the field gate badly.
We are cut off progressively by each past becoming more and more that different country. How many children today kindle a coal fire in the grate ? Not just a lost skill, will they recognise what a poker and tongs are for in a museum ?
‘Trouble at t’mill’ is an old and definite literary genre in itself, long predating the Pythons, set in the North and whose hey day would have been the 1910s to 20s, but which probably extended back to Mrs. Gaskell but which went on to Thomas Armstrong ( now forgotten ) up to the 1950s. Necessary elements were striking factory workers [ mill means factory in this context ]; a fire at the factory; possibly a faithful dog belonging to either the employer or an honest worker or a brutish scoundrel.
Beyond the reach of non-British people — just as half of American or any other nation’s unspoken tradition is beyond our reach — Bill Tidy’s comic strip The Fosdyke Saga sent up this kind of thing something rotten.
I was angry at a British bloke once, told him to go to the hell.
mmm
I only ever heard the use of “town” to mean London in books, said by people who would only do their serious shopping/culture/socialising there.