I was reading the thread about wet hair and it’s debatable effects on one’s health (for the record I have naturally dead straight hair and leave home with it wet everyday, winter or summer. I am rarely sick).
While reading I channeled/heard my Nana say “If you go out with wet hair you will catch the dreaded lurgy”. When anyone had a cold in my family they “had the lurgy”. The lurgy usually referred to cold-like syptoms, but it covered general illness too.
My question is, is this a NZ expression, a British expression, an American expression or a ?(somewhere else) expression.
Kiwi-English is very magpie-like, stealing a bit from here and a bit from there. Where does lurgy come from?
I like that answer! I was thinking it was some bastardisation of allergy. Goons is much better…though how my Nana caught on to the Goons is just too odd to think about, considering she actually believed it!
The show (actually entitled “Lurgi Strikes Britain”) was first broadcast on the 9th of November 1954 - fifty-three years ago! - and was co-written by the great Eric Sykes. A transcript may be seen here.
