THE BRITISH THREAD II

Okay. So you don't consider it possible that the word was older than the usage in Dutch (sic! to which 'Dutch' are you referring?)?


(You are certainly aware of "John the ******", mentioned by John Ayto, from around 1250?)

The word is probably Aryan in its origins, so you would expect most european languages to have started with it. You need to show it is in common use. If I look into an english dictionary today I will find many words that are not commonly spoken. **** was common in 'ancestral german', of which dutch and angles and saxons are derivatives. The distant ancestor common to german and english had a similar word but it did not survive in common usage in english. For it to be in common usage you need people to be speaking it. The only examples of this in english come from after the english and dutch had close connections. It is reasonable to say this is where it came from as there is no common ground for it to have come from german and it was common in the dutch, then it was common in english after trade contacts.

The word was not common in Norman which was grounded in Danish and Frankish but had evolved into a version of ancient french by the time of the norman invasion. The word was also not common in anglo-saxon. I am not aware of John the ******, but it strikes me as not a common name if it did exist. Would you like such a man in your village ?

We've got several in ours.

Interestingly, my oldest, biggest dictionary is too polite to mention this word but my other one says "16th C, origin unknown." Evidently they (Oxford Dictionaries) could learn something here.

I think it has resulted as an abbreviation of the universal involuntary vocalisation of the sound a man makes during the completion of the act it denotes and immediately before the shame and disgust kicks in.

To render it in real time would probably get one arrested. It derives from a stutter.

Well, we here have different ideas about the Germanic languages.


You see, 'ficken' originally meant (besides others) 'to move s. th. fast'.
So we've got it - over the centuries - in various other words and word meanings.
My father-in-law, for instance, was a "Schwertfeger" (the very last one in Solingen with a full three year apprenticeship) - that's a peron "*******" a sword (fegen here doesn't come from fegen = to sweep but from fegen = ficken)

Family names with 'ficken' in it aren't uncommon in German(y), like the author Ludwig von Ficker or the historian Julius von Ficker; and from the phonebook: Fickler, Fickeisen, Fickartz, Fickensen.

Our phone book is chock full of Fuckwits.

One does learn such a lot on these threads.

I'd never before heard of John the ****** or indeed Ludwig von Ficker and as for being a time-served Schwertfeger....it's all too much to take in.

Were Barcelona playing the same game as Arsenal? Didn't look like it.

Great game though Mac. That put American football into the long grass. Which is a great pity I think. A country like the US could easy be one of the top teams in the world if they wanted.

There's a lot of good Americans playing in the Football League now.

I think they'll do well in the upcoming World Cup. (if they're in the finals? sorry I don't know)

If they had of consulted a world expert on ******* such as I, then they would have more information. At least we agree on the time...1500, 16 th C.

In desperation i googled it and woe and behold, there he is John the ****** but it also says :


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/****

I am certain you are in error, spendy...there is no way we could be using the same phone book.

I am a bit worried about USians when it comes to sport. Why do they have the World League of Baseball but refuse to invite the Japanese and Koreans to play ? Are they worried about being beaten ? And when it comes to soccer, they have the population to do much better than they do...do they refuse to play it because of all the wogs and foriegners ?

The US is in the same group as England Mac. Our first match is against them in Rustenburg on the 12th of June.

Then beware of the USA. Remember we burnt their White House once. Whole place had to be redecorated.

Oh which reminds me: temperature scale:

50°F
People in Southern England turn on the central heating
People in Edinburgh plant out bedding plants

40°F
Southerners shiver uncontrollably
Glaswegians sunbathe on the beach at Largs

35°F
Cars in the South of England refuse to start
People in Falkirk drive with their windows down

20°F
Southerners wear overcoats, gloves and woolly hats
Aberdonian men throw on a t-shirt; girls start wearing mini-skirts

15°F
Southerners begin to evacuate to the continent
People from Dundee swim in the River Tay at Broughty Ferry

0°F
Life in the South grinds to a halt
Inverness folk have the last BBQ before it gets cold

-10°F
Life in the South ceases to exist
People in Dunfermline throw on a light jacket

-80°F
Polar bears wonder if it's worth carrying on
Boy Scouts in Oban start wearing their long trousers

-100°F
Santa Claus abandons North Pole
People in Stirling put on their 'long johns'

-173°F
Alcohol freezes
Glaswegians get upset because all the pubs are shut

-297°F
Microbial life starts to disappear
The cows in Dumfriesshire complain about farmers with cold hands

-460°F
All atomic motion stops
Shetlanders stamp their feet and blow on their hands

-500°F
Hell freezes over
Scotland will support England in the World cup

I think that the reason is that they try to avoid doing things that we English do as a way of asserting their independence. They can't avoid using the English language but they have found ways of manipulating the words so that they don't mean anything. This enables their legal profession to expand exponentially and eventually suck the life blood out of them thus paving the way for the reassertion of the native stock of those geographical zones.

If A2K is anything to go by, they think that an assertion is all the scientific evidence needed to establish a fact. e.g. farmerman yesterday declared one of my brilliant posts which he had no answer for to be "convoluted and uncreative". That assertion satisfied him, and his fans, that the point I had raised had been confuted, contradicted and demolished and thereby he was helping to save the bluefin tuna from extinction and thus that he is a superior person to myself. Just like that, as Tommy Cooper used to say.

When I won the A2K American football Pick-Um Championship over the last season of nearly 300 games and 17 weeks, defeating about 30 American football experts, by a clear margin, in the process, the same wise gentleman declared I had predicted the results by drawing my selections from a sock despite the known fact that the mathematics of such a method would have consigned me to last place.

We are reticent to discuss the assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, poised to blast us all to bits at 30 minutes notice.

Both Sir Winston Churchill and Sir Anthony Eden referred in their memoirs to this capacity of Americans to not only believe their own assertions on the evidence of their having asserted them but to expect everyone else to do so as if it is some iron law of the universe.

Here's farmerman's latest assertion Io.

Quite funny Mac. You're a hard lot indeed. No wonder the Romans decamped.

Funny ?? A weather report ??

I have it on good authority the I-ties as they were known then left because they got flogged at football.