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

Where does 'copycat' come from? Cats aren't known for their ability to imitate are they?

That seems like a good hypothesis, ~jwf~, and your evidence is interesting.

FK,

"Where does 'copycat' come from? Cats aren't known for their ability to imitate are they?"

Interesting.
Ours can imitate eating sleeping machines, or sleeping eating machines. I can't remember which.

The Concise OED doesn't list "copycat". "Copy clerk" is there though. Not a million pronunciation miles away and the job entailed producing an exact copy of another document.

>> Where does 'copycat' come from? <<

I was hoping someone would have given us something on this one. It really got me thinking but so far there seems no logical explanation for 'copy' cat. Cats aren't known for their impersonations or miming skills and are generally considered to be pretty independent and individualistic. It's monkeys what see and do.

Of course there's also 'scaredy-cats' and 'fraidy-cats'. These are understandable and widely known because cats are often nervous and jumpy. Kids probably still use these terms (or at least understand the meaning) pretty much everywhere that English is spoken.

Maybe it's just because 'copycats' has the same rhythm and ryme as 'scaredycats' and 'fraidycats'. Like 'alley-cats' or 'lollygags'.

~jwf~

>> Where does 'copycat' come from? <<

I was hoping someone would have given us something on this one. It really got me thinking but so far there seems no logical explanation for 'copy' cat. Cats aren't known for their impersonations or miming skills and are generally considered to be pretty independent and individualistic. It's monkeys what see and do.

Of course there's also 'scaredy-cats' and 'fraidy-cats'. These are understandable and widely known because cats are often nervous and jumpy. Kids probably still use these terms (or at least understand the meaning) pretty much everywhere that English is spoken.

Maybe it's just because 'copycats' has the same rhythm and ryme as 'scaredycats' and 'fraidycats'. Like 'alley-cats' or 'lollygags'.

~jwf~

Well there you have it:
that's taking "predictive text" to the extreme.

Lateral thinking. I hadn't considered the other phrases. What else? There is "fat cat" but that's really a grown up's phrase. Better not to mention the jellicle cats etc. which are a special case.

Lollygag? I'm sorry, I don't know what that means...


So, it's not just me having problems with hootoo?

>> So, it's not just me having problems with hootoo? <<

I'm getting a lot of 'Error 502' messages on failed and half-failed multi-frame pages. I take it that means the server is busy. It might be reasonable to suspect the recent release of the movie has created a lot of merging internet traffic and search engine huffing and puffing. The site servers are responding to gazillions of new connections.

And since they do not prioritise those of us who were already here we take our chances along with everyone else everytime we click around here. It is often a question of timing.

For example above when I replied to 10901 my posting did not appear. I got a partial Error 502 message that showed me plaguesville's 10904 in another frame. Somehow I had a feeling my posting was just in limbo somewhere and would appear out of sequence and out of time. So I then amended the subject line and posted it a second time. Sure enough this second posting appeared as 10905 ahead of the original that eventually came up later as 10906.

Computers think in circles and will always come back to the same point eventually. It's the nature of discs and disc drives to create their own gravitas. While not all loops are infinite it can be safely assumed that all loops are loopy.

Lollygagging is a highly refined form of shiftless laziness such as Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn might enage in on a too warm summer afternoon. But most dictionaries say its source is unknown.


~jwf~

I don't know why I've just thought of this, nor why I haven't thought of it before.

Can anyone or anybody or someone or somebody or no one or nobody devise a credible rule for the use of any of these pairs. Now that I have thought of the question, I can't recall which I normally use nor whether I apply a rule. Are they semantically identical pairs? Is the selection purely a matter of personal choice?

I don't think we've dealt with this before.
I wish I hadn't thought of it, it's got me worried.

I shall not accept as an answer any number between 41 and 43.

it must be time for my tablets - industrial strength, tonight, please.

Sure you didn't self medicate earlier p? I see no pairs...

I've just laid down three pairs!
Are you implying that I'm cheating?
Go fer yore gun, pardner!

H2g2 seems to be better today, ~jwf~, which is good.

Re lollygag, of course! I just needing reminding, cos my mother used to say it.

BTW, re talking Scots - my father (L'pool) used to say 'It wants washing' (or whatever verb applies) and Scots people says 'It wants washed'...

>> I've just laid down three pairs! <<


Or was it three ones and three antibodies?

Does two three-of-a-kinds beat three pairs?
(3 x 2) = (2 x 3)

Ones and bodies have indeed become almost interchangable. At least for me since I began writing online. I got the impression this was considered a very telling regional dialect thingy and for every three english speaking persons that would say 'one' you'll get three more that say 'body' and no one ever saying a word to anybody about it.

So I simply gave up trying to write in a mid-atlantic dialect when I realised I was going to be completely misunderstood by antipodeans anyway. What's a body to do in a case where one is damned for doing as well as don'ting.

But to answer your question I certainly do vaguely recall a time when ones were considered more formal and bodies were reserved for more intimate uses.
egs: imagine a teacher, officer, or authority figure enters a crowded room to suggest an evacuation and most likely saying, 'Attention everyONE' while a peer or member of the crowd would say 'Hey everyBODY'.

Just my tuppence guv. I mean, who knows eh, there may well be rules for this what are writ down somewhere and we could both be learning a thing or two if anyone cared to inform us further.

~jwf~

The Blues Brothers wouldn't have been half as much fun if they'd only had "Everyone" to choose from... not to mention Eddie Cochrane.

Sorry, I've got nothing sensible to say, but I'm going to start mulling the question over.

And on a related subject to "cosy" (I think I'll plump for the "causer" version there) ... how come the American word "homely" means exactly the opposite to the Brit Eng word. And where do Australians, Irish, Canadians, and NZers stand on this one?

in German
(A) "Heimlich" means "secret"
(B) "Unheimlich" means sinister or mysterious
(C) "Heimisch" means pertaining to home

"Homely" to a Brit means "comfortable", "like home" - as in (C) above.
"Homely" to an American means the same as "unheimlich" above - i.e. unsettling, mysterious, sinister, uncanny. as in (B) above

Doesn't it?

The US "homely" is a euphemism, isn't it?
(Or is that the instrument that Jimmy Edwards used to play?)
It suggests, to me, a homelike connection similar to the expression "with a face that only a mother could love".

Good point about the lyrics. The usual pronunciation "ev-ry-bod-y" fits better in 4/4 time, "ev-ry-one" would fit in 3/4 OK but to square it up into 4/4 would put two beats on one syllable, or produce "ev-er-y-one" would put the accent on "-y-"

Even if you shoe-horn "everyone" into the rhythm, you'll have a harder job getting "someone" to stand in place of "sombody".

Homely also means plain in brit eng, not very good-looking but not screamingly ugly either.

*disappointed at lack of resolution of copycat*

I found this on takeourword.com where somebody asked the same question:

"Cat has been used to refer contemptibly to people at least as far back as Shakespeare's time ("A pox upon him for me, he’s more and more a Cat", in All’s Well That Ends Well. It was simply paired with copy to refer to someone who mimicked another's actions. Copycat made its first known appearance in writing in 1896: "I ain’t heard of a copy-cat this great many years..’twas a favorite term o’ my grandmother’s" in S. O. Jewett's Country of Pointed Firs."

Following on from that, it seems highly likely that "copy-cat" is as it is because of the alliteration of the initial "c" sounds. "Copy-dog" doesn't really work, and yet "dog" is also a Shakespearean term of contempt for a man. This is speculation, of course. The term does not appear in Green's "Slang through ther Ages."

<>

As a NZer with a British parent, I'd say by and large, we go with the British meaning (cosy, domestic) but the American meaning is creeping in (as most NZisms are becoming Americanisms if they aren't already - see A1001683 ) and so it's coming to mean 'ugly'.. which has led to some confusion when older people place personal adverts!

In North America the positive notions of 'homely' - the simple rustic qualities of being honest, plain and unadorned - were all swept away by the glamour of the roaring 20s and the subsequent rise of multi-media entertainments.

All the familiar pleasures of American homelife could not compete with the new electric jazz age of motorcars and radios. What was once safe and secure and familiar was no longer good enough for those with ambition, and 'homely' became a synonym for 'ugly'.

This devaluation of the rustic and rise of the plastic led us to our present state of electronic ecstacies, sound bites, instant gratifications and nothing of any lasting consequence.

In Canada we would still recognise 'homely' as meaning what 'homey' now means in the US today - comfortable and familiar in an unadorned and unpretentious way, working class and possibly afro-american in sub-text. But we'd be unlikely to use it except in a Pythonesque caraciture performance of an ancient Brit or Celtic type. Or an American snob.

That's the nice thing about being Canadian, you can have you homey and be homely too.

~jwf~