mctag : great stuff ! hope you don't mind if i steal some of those lines. they'll come in handy to entertain the other fellows at swimtime in the morning (jokes usually are not told until we are under the showers !!!). hbg
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Joe Nation
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Wed 1 Sep, 2004 05:45 pm
This only bugs me a little: American using British usage as if it were their own: Someone who is missing is described as 'gone missing'. Gone missing seems to me to be redundant in some way, someone is missing and they are gone somewhere but gone missing still doesn't seem to fit unless the speaker is wearing a tweed hat.
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Steve 41oo
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Wed 1 Sep, 2004 06:18 pm
Depends on who they gone missing with Joe
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Clary
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Fri 15 Oct, 2004 05:00 am
Is gone fishing similarly tautologous?
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McTag
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Fri 15 Oct, 2004 06:22 am
No, different, it seems to me.
Because "fishing" is an occupation, whereas "missing" is not.
"Gone doo-lally". Do the Americans and others here know that one? More information on request.
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Joe Nation
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Fri 15 Oct, 2004 06:25 am
Okay, I'll bite. What the hell is "Gone doo-lally".
Joe
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McTag
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Fri 15 Oct, 2004 06:32 am
Well Joe, are you sitting comfortably? Good.
That phrase means "gone mad, gone off his rocker" in Britain and its origin was during the Brirish Raj when we had a standing Army in India.
There was a sanitorium in the hills at Deolali, and soldiers who became mentally afflicted were sent there to recover if possible.
Anyone sent there was assumed, perhaps cruelly, to have become mentally feeble, as in
"Where's Joe?
- "He's gone doo-lally"
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Joe Nation
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Fri 15 Oct, 2004 06:41 am
I think it so nice of the British to give us so many words for madness.
Bedlam, comes to mind, as well as crackers, but you would be mad to have crackers in bedlam, wouldn't you?
Never mind, I'm off, if I don't return I'll be missing or gone missing, whatever.
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Grand Duke
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Fri 15 Oct, 2004 09:43 am
I always think there's a grain of truth in the expression "Poor people are mad, rich people are merely eccentric."
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Merry Andrew
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Fri 15 Oct, 2004 03:15 pm
McT -- thanks for the information on doo-lally. I knew what the expression meant, all right, but I didn't know the etymology. Much like bedlam, eh?
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Clary
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Sat 16 Oct, 2004 12:01 pm
Bedlam is a corruption of Bethlehem, an asylum in South London which is now the Imperial War Museum... uneasy ghosts!?
Is it universal, this euphemism about madness? Now people aren't loony or doo-lally or mad or even insane. They 'have mental problems' or are 'disturbed'. Call a spade a spade, I say. My husband went mad. He didn't just suffer some mental problems, he wasn't just emotionally disturbed; he might have been suffering from bipolar disorder but actually, he was mad. I would appreciate the doctors being straight.
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McTag
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Sat 16 Oct, 2004 02:09 pm
Well I think I agree with that. I am quite reactionary, I'm told, when the vexed question of political correctness is discussed. I am non-PC when there seems to be no call for it, and when it's use complicates, trivialises or obfuscates.
Although in the field of mental health I'm sure the professionals would disagree. "She had been suffering from mental health problems, but has responded well to treatment" sounds better than "She was mad, now she's saner".
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Merry Andrew
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Sat 16 Oct, 2004 02:30 pm
My ex-mum-in-law (RIP) used to say: "Insane? We're all insane. It's a matter of degree."
Clary, while I do agree that euphemisms are to be eschewed, in the field of mental health it's damned difficult to suggest a course of treatment for someone if the diagnosis is simply, "He's crazy." That's like saying of a patient, "He's sick." Well, yes, but with what specific disease? I suggest that a doctor needs to know whether a patient has bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia [sp?] before he can do the bonkers nutcake any good.
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Joe Nation
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Sat 16 Oct, 2004 08:20 pm
Brits go bonkers, Mericans go wacko.
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McTag
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Sat 16 Oct, 2004 11:25 pm
Social norms evolve.
I am remembering something I read about "Bedlam" or Bethlehem asylum.
In those days (18th c?) it was a pastime for the good folks of the city for entertainment to go there, pay their money and observe, through barred windows no doubt, the inmates howling inside.
I daresay that's why the place became so famous as to lend its name to describe a very noisy, confused place.
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kitchenpete
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Mon 18 Oct, 2004 02:41 am
Irregular verb:
I...am an individual
You...are eccentric
He...is stark raving mad
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McTag
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Thu 21 Oct, 2004 11:13 am
Here's another one:
-Why do Americans use the word "hero" to serve for both male and female? There is the perfectly good word "heroine" which we use, and some Americans will be aware of it I'm sure, so why do they/ you persist in having female "heroes"?
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Letty
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Thu 21 Oct, 2004 11:57 am
Somehow, McTag. Bette Middler's song "Wind Beneath my Wings" doesn't quite lend itself to heroine.<smile>
Clary, that was an interesting bit about Bedlam having been Bethlehem, but whatever, it beats the hell out of the Snake Pit. Did anyone mention looney tunes?
Yes, Andrew, for the sake of the patients and their families, a gentler word is easier to take, although neurotic and psychotic are scary terms.
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Lady J
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Thu 21 Oct, 2004 12:23 pm
An old friend of mine used to use a word that for some reason left me feeling that sensation of fingernails on a chalkboard. He used to combine the words flustered and frustrated to make flustrated.
Such a simple thing in the grand scheme, I know. but it really made me shudder....
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Merry Andrew
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Thu 21 Oct, 2004 04:24 pm
McT -- the recent abandonment of the feminine form of 'hero' in this Politically Correct society [caps intentional] is all part of an all-out effort to not give gender identification to some honorifics. I've actually seen actresses referred to 'actors' in some super-PC publication. There are no comediennes any more; Carol Burnett is a comedian. And so on and so forth. Didn't realize that that was an Americanism. 'Heroine' used to be commonplace in American English.
Gone missing seems to me to be redundant in some way, someone is missing and they are gone somewhere but gone missing still doesn't seem to fit unless the speaker is wearing a tweed hat.
