h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

ok cant be arsed is referring to you cant be bothered to do something for laziness.



And as for the working one........forgotten what it was...anyway there was one to do with working really hard....

And there are only a few school children that still use the word willy.....most of them now call them other things.....in fact i remember..wiggy....dick....cock....

Its always going on but it seems it is constantly getting named after other things....such as chickens and boys names....not that i would like to make dozdim the new word for cock...but why does it always change...answer that and ill give you a gold medal!

LMAO!

Also nowadays the word going commando....

tell us that..because it seems to have two different meanings,some guy itching a pea sized...and some weird person going without pants......

And sorry if your american but learn english!

As the primary author of this piece, I appear to be the one who responds to posts on it.



> ok cant be arsed is referring to you cant be bothered to do something for laziness

Which is what the entry says: "apathy or a lack of enthusiasm" - same difference, surely



> And as for the working one........forgotten what it was...anyway there was one to do with working really hard....





> And there are only a few school children that still use the word willy.....most of them now call them other things.....in fact i remember..wiggy....dick....cock....

Sure - not disputing that. The way the entry describes the word 'willy' is "childish" and as an "innocent playground word" (ie it is not used pornographically, medically, scientifically, or as an expletive). I fail to see that there is any contradiction in what you have said and what the entry says.

"Wiggy" is interesting though - I haven't heard it before. Is it regional? Is it specific to a particular age-group? I am genuinely interested to know more about the word.


> Its always going on but it seems it is constantly getting named after other things....such as chickens and boys names....not that i would like to make dozdim the new word for cock...but why does it always change...answer that and ill give you a gold medal!

Interesting question - my guess is that it is extremely important to people, (well, to men and to little boys, natch), and therefore both powerful and scary.

In addition, it is something that everyone talks about, and talks about in slang terms rather than formal ones because of that power-thing, presumably; and slang is subject to fashion. In fact slang basically *is* verbal fashion.

There are a huge number of names for female genitalia too for much the same reason. In fact there was a thread on that very subject here a couple of years ago.

I actually heard a name I had not heard before for a cock last night. Ron Jeremy referred to his as his "schwenkle" - or was it his "schwecker"? Damn. I should have written it down.



> LMAO!

> Also nowadays the word going commando....

> tell us that..because it seems to have two different meanings,some guy itching a pea sized...and some weird person going without pants......

What do you mean by "itching a pea sized"? The definition in the entry is going without pants (ie underwear) and I understand that, but I don't understand your phrase.



> And sorry if your american but learn english!

On the evidence, I think more of the English I have learned so far in my lifetime has actually stuck.

Ben

true i wasnt calling u american i was saying that due to they think of pants as trousers jeans etc...

LMAO at whatever the sweztner thing was...if he called it schwartzneger he might not be around for much longer LOL!

Also i do believe there is one to do with beer.....its something like (the bears name) is a bunch of W*nkers or something like that

Well it feels weird explaining this word...by the way you dont get the gold medal because i doint think there is an answer but for doing it anyway........

And by the way so yeah well it is another name for a cock,,,,,and i think it replaced willy....either that or the boy down the road saw willy wrtten down once and couldnt speak properly.....

Yeah i think iots a more manly term of willy.

But still laughing at the pitcher just grabbed the batsmans willy!

What actually happened there because i still dont understand it...

And free willy is an advert for a nudist colony isnt it?LMAO

it ust be so hard to learn....

there are so many phrases..................i wuld pay big money to see some guy talking about what happens in a stripper joint in english if hes chinese!

im surprised you didnt talk about that too because also in playground little kiddies meet around the corners to tell each other all the words they know...(im thinking of the recess cartoon when tj is off camera) LMAO!

Hello?Thought u were on ur way ere

thouht it was more than severn popsts,it is its 8!

"The batsman's Holding the bowler's Willie" comment came about because there were two cricketers on different teams, one whose surname was Holding and the other whose surname was Willie.

It was a joke waiting to happen, and when - eventually - the opportunity came the BBC cricket commentators came up trumps with that phrase. Though someone has recently suggested that it was done for a bet, not as a mistake.

Ron Jeremy was on Frank Skinner last night - if you were watching Graham Norton you missed a treat. I was rolling around with laughter, and Frank Skinner looked slightly nervous every now and again.

Cheers.

B

RE 'why does it always change'

There's also perjoration and amelioration. Words for things that are taboo (sex and sexuality especially) will perjorate more quickly than other words. For example any word that means female person seems to end up meaning prostitute. So, more words needed to make polite conversation possible at all.

But there probably isn't a single explanation. Lots of factors involved in language change.

bragger slagger for instance?

Taboo?I thought that was myph?

Sorry,with craziness comes partial laziness,partial dopey......ism.....(what?LOL!) and unbelievable funism!LOL!

"Wiggly wobbly wonder" is a phrase I remember from my (rural Church of Ireland) primary school. I think that was named after an ice pop.

TRiG.

Might have been wibbly, not wiggly. I'm not sure.

"'Smeg' is a word that has only come into common usage as a swear-word since 1988 after it was popularised by the BBC science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf."

Total bull. I've heard this so many times and it is so wrong. we were using it in the school playground back in the 60s. It had been in 'common usage' for years before Red Dwarf.

I even heard Craig Charles claiming to have invented it in an interview once.

There was a reference in the article to a "Son of a Gun" and it suggested it came from Shotgun wedding!!!!! I am Ex-Royal Navy and learned while serving that a son of a gun was the offspring of the Prostitutes who would serve the Gun Crews on warships. THEY WERE OFTEN BORN ONBOARD.

I'd stand by that to be honest. It might have been in limited useage locally, but the fact is many people didn't even know what the word meant until they saw Red Dwarf. It does say it was 'popularised' after the series though.

one that pops out at me is the use of the term "butt naked"
Actually in Michigan this was always "buck naked"
perhaps having something to do with our deer hunters.

Butt naked and buck naked have an interesting history.
http://english.stackexchange.com/q/22973/1696

TRiG.

a very interesting blog there.

It's not a blog, it's a Q&A site. It explicitly discourages discussion, and good answers float to the top. The programming site http://stackoverflow.com was the first, but now they have Q&A sites on all sorts of subjects.

TRiG.