Entertainment For Lively Minds
Popular culture and the "O" suffix
Is it just an old misanthrope like me or does anybody else wince when he comes across examples of perfectly serviceable words chopped into two in order to weld on the letter "O" in a doomed effort to make the word seem more matey? Particularly skin-crawling examples include:
Crimbo - attempt to refer to ancient festival of Nativity without making anyone think of anything much more exalted than Baileys Irish Cream.
Glasto - the original name of this town is one of the most savourable, beautiful place names in the English language. Abbreviated in this fashion it sounds like the nickname of a roadie for Cud.
Lambo - the Italian manufacturer of obscenely expensive, high performance vehicles is commonly abbreviated by Jeremy Clarkson and other saloon bar blowhards to sound like a plumber's wrench. "Darren, go to the van and get me the lambo, will you?"
Any more people would like to get off their chest? And don't stray into the nasty Australian habit of putting "ie" at the end of words. That's for another time.
- More from David Hepworth.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Combo, for combination
And anyone who uses "Beat Combo" on here should be barred and beaten.
JEBO
A couple of years ago at the Royal Albert Hall I saw an excellent band supporting Genesis tribute band The Musical Box (stop that now; they were stunningly good and worth every penny of the £50 ticket price). Sadly the name of the support band was and remains JEBO. I bought their CD but I'm sure it is the awful name that has stopped me liking it.
Too right! Distro?
I currently work for an American company, and during early conversations they lost me completely by regularly referring to the "distro" - e.g. I'll let this distro know, I'll update the distro tomorrow etc. Eventually I worked out it means "distribution list" as in for the circulation of emails.....ARRRRGH
I want to...
kill myself after reading that. That is so sad. Poor you, having to listen to that all day.
I am like totally
going to start using distro.
Thankso.
I'm, like, hating 'Jacko'
Makes the painted, bewigged nutcase sound like your mate from the pub. Overly chummy and wrong.
Oh yes
"Jacko" is the unmistakable mark of the arriviste. It was only introduced long after he became a superstar.
Surely it arrived alongside...
wacko
And...
Ho
A
guitarist I used to know called his instrument a 'Gibbo', which I thought was particularly demeaning for such an august brand.
Not sure it works too well with your name either, does it Heppo?
I believe Mr. Williams sometimes suffers 'Robbo' from the red tops too. Yuck.
Gibbie
Similarly I have heard "Gibbie" which is as bad, and even worse, "git box" as a generic term for a guitar. Tossers.
as eny fule know
'tis "Axe".
Only if
you're 16, spotty and dream of being in Metallica.
Too funny
....Heppo - and of course Ello, LO to his friends, unlimited opportunities for amusement of the "'Ello Ello" variety etc. Tee hee.
Twat
I hate it when a twat who looks like Jamie Oliver (or who is actually Jamie Oliver) says "coolio". This usally happens when a group of twats have arranged to go for some "scoops".
The originator...
A picture tells a thousand words
Dear oh dear.
Not so.
Twatty picture, but a great rapper in his day. A cornerstone of the very marvellous "Tommy Boy's Greatest Beats" compilation.
And
that, children, is what happens when you stick your fingers in the socket.
Two-and-a-half years later...
My mother can get better results from Photoshop than that, and she's just been registered blind. (All true, unfortunately.)
I can heartily recommend his cookbook
But if you want to talk about Coolio in a bad Photoshop nightmare...
Glasto
Glastonbury is indeed a wonderful country town and the Tor is a delightfully atmospheric place. Glasto is a nasty over-commercialised circus of the average for the average, at least on the main stages. (I accept that the distant fields retain an aura from greater days.) Just about befitting a roady from Cud, methinks.
Lambo had me confused for a minute; I thought you were referring to the excellent advertisents for sheep and cow flesh, with the witty cartoon cricketers.
LOL!
"I thought you were referring to the excellent advertisents for sheep and cow flesh, with the witty cartoon cricketers"
genius line.
LOL!
LOL! is starting to do my head in actually
Yes...
you do have a point... but it is a convenient way of saying you find something funny.
Fair Enough
Actually I didn't know what it meant until quite recently and I wondered why Mr Creme of 10CC was getting all these mentions...
That is very funny
you see... it's so much easier writing LO...
LOL confusion
Until relatively recently my wife thought "LOL" meant Lots of Love. Tricky things these acronyms...
So did I
Until a second ago. Not that I ever thought of it.
Up till fairly recently...
... I thought LOL was a very aggressive "Learn Our Language." Seriously.
ROFLCOPTERS*
:-D < wide mouth smiley emoticon >
* This term has already gone the way of "chick", "cat" and "groovy".
And that makes three of us...
I used to upload photographs on a photo sharing website and this guy kept writing "LOL" in his messages. I was rather confused as to why he was being so overly friendly, until I asked him and he explained all.
You've gotta be quick these days
Keep up, fellas - LOL is on the way out. There's a growing movement to replace it with the much more sensible LOI (laughing on the inside).
LOIS
would be much better.
As long as...
...ROTFLMAO never becomes acceptable currency outside all but the spoddiest of websites.
Quite
right.
that worked, dinnit?
Ha-ha!
One more letter, a hyphen and an exclamation mark. Works for me. It's actually recognisable as a word, too. If you find something extra-funny, you can add another -ha. And if you're being sarkarstic, you can leave off the exclamation mark. Isn't language wonderful!
"Uni"
"Uni".
Anyone who uses the ghastly word is toothickfor.
But then I suppose "Former Useless Polytethnic" is a bit of mouthful
I loathe "uni"
But it's what everybody uses, whether they're at Cambridge or the University of South Heckmondwike.
Sorry
I used it in a post a couple of days ago to save the typing of "versity". Otherwise not a word that generally crops up in my day to day conversation.
However David, does this prohibition extend to Professor Stanley Unwin who liked to stick a few O's on the end of words?
University
I'm in the final year of my degree and have never once referred to the establishment in question as "uni". However, I often seem that little bit more tired than many of the other students: maybe those extra three syllables are starting to take their toll.
Why Thank You
for the mention of Heckmondwike. As its nickname is Hecky maybe I can refer to it as Hecko.
It's used these days
by prospective or actual students who don't really value it because everyone can go to 'uni' now. In the olden days, when 2% of the population went, it was deemed an honour and a privilege and was thus held in esteem. No one would have thought of debasing it with a diminutive because people felt privileged to go there. In these days of equal opportunities and democritisation, Uncle Tom Cobley and all have felt it their right to go and, in order to accommodate them, standards have dropped to the extent that, even if you can barely write English, you can get a place.
The fruits of this are evident in journalism, where a line in The Observer the other week read "Where did people get so bored of where they are going..."
"I may go to uni but I may go on a gap year or I may loll around playing my X-Box. 'S'all the same to me."
I should add that refreshment has been taken and I haven't got the energy to enter into a debate or verbal fisticuffs.
I'm going to bite anyway
I went to university from 2005 to 2008. I worked extremely hard to get there, and now have a BSc in Mathematics from one of the best universities in the country. *dons class warrior hat* I went to a comprehensive school and took two jobs while studying in order to pay my way through my studies.
While I was there, I referred to my place of education as "uni." There was me thinking it was because it was the 21st Century and a shortening of the word "university." Many thanks for enlightening me that it was because I'm a lazy, X-Box playing imbecile with a sense of entitlement who can barely write English anyway.
Oh, and I don't care how pissed you are, I don't see that as a valid excuse for such prejudiced generalisations.
Not pissed
but refreshed by a couple of glasses of wine. All power to your elbow, Joe, for your achievement: you read for a meaningful degree at a top university. My comments were not really fuelled by prejudice, but by information I've read and young people with whom I've come in contact. For every hard working graduate like you there are many who drift to university to take a degree in something that would formerly have been taught at a polytechnic, and courses have been designed for those who are not academically able to read for an academic degree. I did read about one university which felt it necessary to offer a course in simple grammar because many of its undergraduates didn't know how to write English (and I'm not talking here about foreign students).
Blair's attempt to offer everyone a university education might have been well meant but was ultimately flawed, in that university isn't necessarily best suited to everyone and we now have a situation where graduates are unable to find jobs and plumbers are making a very good living.
A quote from The Guardian over a year ago:
'A leading scientist has attacked the government for funding students doing "Mickey Mouse" degrees – and called for the money to be spent on science instead.
Dr Richard Pike, chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said degrees in celebrity journalism, drama combined with waste management, and international football business management – all of which exist – should be "kicked into touch".'
In exactly the same way that the easy availability of recorded music has led to its devaluing (how can someone with 13,000 tracks on their mp3 player really value each one?) so the ease of access hitherto to university has meant a greater dropout rate than in previous generations and a concomitant devaluing, for many, of a university education.
I should also add that many years ago, if you got a place at university, you grabbed it. These days the decision is sometimes "Should I go or should I have a gap year?", which to me indicates a lack of urgency or excitement because such an achievement, for many, isn't what it used to be. Oh, and my background is very much 'working class'.
RIGHT, WELL IN THAT CASE,
I, er... totally agree with you.
Apologies for jumping down your throat but I just thought you were tarring all students with the same brush. Everything you've just written I'd certainly agree with in some cases, but for me, and a lot of people I know, that certainly isn't the case. I'm not sure why I tried to bring class into it either - I'm too English for my own good sometimes.
Even as a lentil-munching, yoghurt-knitting, pacifist leftie, I'll acknowledge that the Blair government royally ballsed up higher education. Half the point of uni (I'm going to keep calling it that by the way *winking emoticon*) is that it has some degree of exclusivity and it isn't for everyone. Blair's aim to get 50% of 18 year olds into higher education was misguided at best, and for it to be more determined on income than aptitude (which is how it's panned out) is lunacy.
Also, thanks for not having a go at me for being so chippy. Crass generalisations about "the youth of today" are one of my pet hates, but you'd have had every right to voice your annoyance with me.
Not at all annoyed, Joe.
I'm very much left of centre, and my pub drinking friend Stuart (check out www.fraserwords.co.uk) is on the extreme far left. He says the socialist moral dilemma, a zen koan if you will, is the desire to give everyone equal opportunities but then be dismayed when the masses contribute to whatever type of devaluation is then created. This discussion is really for the pub, so I really don't want to go into it here, but I do agree with you, and it's a somewhat tendentious point of view, that university (;-)) "has some degree of exclusivity". Blair's, and many people's, error is to confuse equality of opportunity with equality of capability, and I feel it's unfair to try and conflate the two.
I'd also like to mention that in the past I've managed two drug and alcohol residential rehabs and worked with emotionally, materially, and culturally deprived men (and that's certainly no place for anyone who's right wing or prejudiced in any way!) and one of the rewards I've had is to help broaden the horizons of those who were extremely intelligent but whose intelligence had been devoted either to crime or otherwise totally misguided. In three cases I can recall, I persuaded (as subtly as I could) that they were far more capable than they realised and that perhaps they should consider higher education and even university. They are now reading for a BA in music, a BA in social work, and a BSc in psychology and criminology respectively, and I'm so proud of them.
Thank you both, Joe and Hazzard
For giving me the oportunity to eavesdrop on a fascinating conversation and providing a masterclass in how to express yourself and your opinions without looking to attack each other at the first chance.
My cockles are warmed!
Thank you, Steve.
And a warm handshake to Joe.
Consider the handshake returned
Though I'm not sure I deserve much of a share in that credit. Incidentally, if anyone's interested, hazzard and I are willing to continue this conversation in a pub of your choosing for a small fee...
The beer,
Skinner's Knocker, is very good in the Church House Inn in Linkinhorne in Cornwall (not connected with brewery or pub, apart from financially supporting both). The fee would have to be large enough to cover the beer.
If I had the technical nous
I'd send you both a virtual pint of your choice. As it stands I'm afraid it'll have to be an imaginary one. Oh sod it, have a chaser too - you deserve it.
Cheers!
.
Ah, the dreaming spires of South Heckmondwyke
Cream tea anyone?
Heckmondwike's Dreaming spires
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
The view from my house, a spire of Heckmondwike (with an i not a y). Oddly enough I had a cream tea on Sunday
Ah, the dreaming spires of South Heckmondwyke
Cream tea anyone?
Oh yes please
But just the one, thanks...!
Oi!
I went to one of those! The former North London Polytechnic! Where The Jesus And Mary Chain started a riot!
Nah, don't worry... it was a dump.
But not as much of a dump as..
the former North Staffordshire Polytechnic, where I survived two years.
Which would have been a damn site
more attractive than Riversdale College of Technology, Aigburth, South Liverpool, which I attended sporadically. Now a housing estate, but the ghosts remain...
Xmas
I hate Xmas.I won't go on but it just bugs me to hell.
I have nightmares about Xmas...
When I was about 8, I had to play a part in a school play and had to say the word 'xmas'. Now call me a brainless trollop, but at that tender age, I didn't know that it meant 'christmas' and should be pronounced in the same way. So I pronounced it as it is written, which led to the whole audience pi**ing themselves laughing and making me feel about an inch tall.
So Xmas can go rot...
I hate to snitch on colleagues but...
...some designers have a habit of calling fluorescent colours "fluoros". I bang my head against the desk silently.
Designers
To put them in their place just call them the "paste-up lads".
Especially if they're girls.
Slightly off the 'o' track...
but I live in Oxford, and have heard students say "Fancy going for a cuzza?"
I believe that means 'curry'.
Nice to know that the finest academic minds in the country are being put to such good use.
That actually makes me...
...want to jump off a bridge. That's hideous! Just... why? It's not an abbreviation, it has the same number of syllables, and most importantly, it makes you sound like an absolute cretin.
Correct.
EVERYBODY knows the correct vernacular for curry is a 'Ruby'?
Story of O
All my mates call me Carto.
It's a Dublin thing.
well
Xmas has been in use for along while it was used by monks as short hand in manuscripts, also I am worried about the Anti-Cudist trend in this strand what as one of Britains greatest live bands and kings of lion pop have have they done to deserve such ridicule?
I know
but mostly its just lazy Chris.
To quote Half Man Half Biscuit,
"You call Glastonbury "Glasto"
You'd like to go there one day
When they put up the gun towers
To keep the hippies away"
Oh yeah
can' t beat the halfos
Half Man Half Biscuit
Marvellous sentiment, says it so much better than either Heppo or I were, despite sustaining/demolishing/retracting said views simultaneously.
Wouldn't 1/2M,1/2B be so much better if their song titles and lyrics promised the same standard of tune and performance. Sadly, more unlistenable claptrap ensues......
I wonder
if this phenomenon was the origin of the American Tivo system.
The name
Timothy is bad enough in itself, it makes me cringe a bit. However, anybody abbreviating it to 'Timbo' should be strung up in my opinion.
Oh, and it annoys me too when Steve Lamacq is referred to as 'Lammo'
What did used to make me laugh was when Mark and Lard did their Radio 1 show and used to add -o onto people's names to make it sound like they were matey with everyone.
"Craig Thompson from Dunstable's emailed in."
"Ah, Thommo! How's he these days?"
Return of Combo
Can I reclaim 'combo'? It's a great word.
I'll swap it for Beemer. Or Duffo.
Brillo, deffo and boggo
Brillo always irritated me - I had a girlfriend once who said it all the time "brillo this, brillo that". Deffo, however, is fine with me. Deffo.
Any advance on "boggo" as in "boggo simple"?
Was...
Biffo the bear's monicker short for something then?
Yup
Lord Nathaniel Edward George Biphomere de Gant, Earl of Hepworth, second Duke of Ellen
But he was skint, hence Biffo the Bare
"it was like" "and I'm like" and urbanisation
I can't stand the 'Valley Girl' voice used for any teeny tale.
And where did the 'urban' accent come from? Which applied to the above would read "It wuz lak" "'n am lak"
Can I blame Tim (Roland Rat reborn) Westwood?
I confess....
Sorry David, I've just remembered that in our house, we don't pop in to Sainsburys, we go to Sainso's... (justification: maybe it's cos it rhymes with our other choices, Tesco's and Waitrose).
Surely
That's Waitro's?
For your info
there's nowt wrong with vino.
Innit.
Unless
you end up a wino
tip:
you lot should probably steer clear of Australia. I've been here 8 months and I'm beginning to forget that it's not a rule of the English language that nouns must end in a vowel.
My name was Nick when I boarded the plane at Heathrow - by the time I touched down in Sydney, it had apparently become 'Nicko'.
And let's not forget the likes of 'bottle-o' (off licence to you and me...)
Sarvo
Apparently, "sarvo" is used by Australian's meaning "this afternoon". Absolutely vile.
Vile is a bit strong?
It's only like an antipodean twist on Cockney rhyming slang?
It could be argued it's language evolution in action?
The thing some Australians do that really bugs me?
It doesn't matter what sentence they speak? It doesn't matter if it's interrogative at all? Every sentence ends like a question?
Do you know what I mean.
Upspeak
This probably originated in the Australian dialect, and it occurs in American some times. This I will concede is part of the vernacular and entirely forgivable. However, for some ten years now it's been a staple in this country too. At its very root is insecurity - are you interested in the information I'm giving you? If I make it sound like a question will it make me seem more conversational? - but it's just plain irritating on every front. To be honest, I don't think it's as bad now as it was in, say, 1998.
German influence?
My mate Ted has lived in Germany for the best part of 20 years. When he comes back here his English sentences tend to end that way. When he's had a couple of drinks his sentences also become dreadfully convoluted with the verb ending up at the end.
Like this?
My mate Ted in Germany for the best part of 20 years has lived. When back here he comes his English sentences that way tend to end. When couple of drinks he's had his sentences also dreadfully convoluted become with the verb at the end ending up.
At this
out loud I laughed.
For reference
At this short video look. Please
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/german/comedy/waiting_for_verb.shtml
have we done...
panto and Bono?
Dear old Bonio......
so much fun before he lost his "i".......
U2's behind you!
Oh no they aren't!
Oh yes they are!
Oh no they aren't!
Oh yes they are!
You have...
the edge on me in the humour department.
Or indeed...
Balerno, Pitsligo, New Pitsligo, Aberlemno, Monboddo, or since this is a music site, the Bonny Lass of Fyvie-o? And then there's the Irish & Welsh...
Ronaldo or Clydenio?
Ask Rob.
The true taste of Manchester
As with many things, it was a Mancunian that did it first...
http://www.hatads.org.uk/review/vimto.jpg
Mr Hepworth, you're bringing out the Lynn Truss in us...
All this from the man who introduced the "Hora" to our collective vernacular....
And wasn't it Messrs. Hepworth and Ellen who were fairly instrumental in bringing "Macca" to the popular parlance?
Ball park, infrastructure...
... bench mark, touch base with. We call them wa*k words in my office. Awful.
Stepping up to the Plate
Helicoptor View, Win Win......Bullshit Bingo. Fantastic game!
Bullshit Bingo!
A game that really pushed the envelope. Great memories. Gave that one the Full Metal Jacket a few times.
Buzz Words
Worked for a company in the 80s when buzzwords were the thing. The Area Manager used every conceivable buzzword and thought he was super cool so a few of us started using made up ones to see if he would adopt them. In a business related note to him i asked him to 'run it up the flagpole and see if it swims' and guess what? You know the rest. What a twat.
Indeed
HORA is a shocker and Heppy and ELO should be ashamed of themselves. But I love it.
Richard Lowe, I always refer to Jimmy Webb as Mr Webb and never Webby. That's you (or "uzza" I suppose).
A previous poster noted "Bono" and I am keen to point out that between Hindhead and Haslemere (on the way home to The Cafe at The Walled Garden Cowdray, another plug) there is a sign to The Edge. Well I never.
skelmersdale
there's a part of skem called pimbo.
very odd
blame the moptops
did they start it all with ringo?
"It's an 'O' living thing"
Wasn't there an orchestral pop combo with the moniker ELO?
More 'O'
What about 'sicko' and, of course, Mr Orbison himself 'The Big "O"'.
Cheerios
Known only as Cheeris in my house.
JEBO
A couple of years ago at the Royal Albert Hall I saw an excellent band supporting Genesis tribute band The Musical Box (stop that now; they were stunningly good and worth every penny of the £50 ticket price). Sadly the name of the support band was and remains JEBO. I bought their CD but I'm sure it is the awful name that has stopped me liking it.
I think we may need to revive this thread...
...it passed me by the first time, but seems worth revisiting in the wake of the Heppo/Heppy (etc...) debates of late.
I'm sure there are fresh insights and observations on the theme to be had.
I have a theory that the Irish 'take' on the English language has a lot to do with this.
For example, in my experience Irish journos (do you see what I did there?) always refer to the 'Irish Independent' newspaper as 'the Indo' - while UK people refer to the Independent as 'the Indy' or indeed 'Indi' (round Jo Whiley's way, surplus copies of it are used as landfill).
Similarly, the Irish lottery was for years (before the UK had one) known - to me, inexplicably, as 'the lotto'.
Popular TV personality Gay Byrne was widely known - frankly, cringeworthily to any sane person - as 'Gaybo'.
This 'o' suffixing as a national tendancy can be contrasted with the 'i' or 'ie' suffixing of Australia, where everything is 'barbies' and 'tinnies', 'surfies' and 'sandies' and all the rest of it. [translation: barbecues; tinned beer; surfers; people on a beach.]
Any other thoughts?
A Swedish linguist
has written an interesting post on the use of the '0' suffix in all kinds of languages. http://linguistlist.org/issues/9/9-360.html It's written for fellow linguists rather than the general public - and my own brain has gone into hibernation this afternoon so I mainly picked up the following things:
1. A Rabbito was a person who sells rabbit meat door to door in Australia until they all died out from myxmatosis - the rabbits, that is, not the rabbitos.
2. The 'O' may be productive. (No, no idea what that means.)
3. It's generally perceived to be derogative across a lot of languages, possibly stemming from the Romance languages.
4. Because there isn't a lot of words ending in 'o' in English, Swedish and French, it has got an outlandish ring to it and the words in turn acquire an outlandish behaviour, eg weirdo.
There is a section about its use coming to America from Ireland and also that the Irish Gaelic 'o' ending meant young, so 'Sean -o' would mean young Sean etc.
There is a football team
of the rugby league variety in Sydney called (and spelt) The Rabbitohs.
The Rabbitohs
(full name South Sydney Rabbitohs NFL) is a rugby leage club part owned by actor Russell Crowe since 2006.
True dat.
Place names
Not really what the OP is about, however there is a concentration of place names ending in 'o' between Dundee and Aberdeen (Stracathro, Kirkbuddo etc.) Can't think of many others elsewhere, aside from Westward Ho!, which doesn't really count.
There's rousing folksongs...
...in Northern Ireland that would have you believe in a town called "Ballycastle-o!". It doesn't exist. It's just Ballycastle. Likewise, that staple of Irish folksong "Amerikay" turns out, disappointly, to be America. And God knows what the lost-in-time writer of Nic Jones's 'trad arr' "Canadee-i-o" was thinking. Clearly, it was well before the days of songwriters' rhyming dictionaries.
And the maid of Fyvie-o
Which the Clancys conveniently rhyme with marry-o, tarry-o etc.
(Though they seem to hold to the Mondegreen 'Fifie-o')
Troops of Irish dragoons, riding through Aberdeenshire...
Cultural imperialists I say
Indeed
Nearly as perplexing as their cockernee rendition of 'My old man said follow the van'
Wow
A bit of Clancy trivia on the board. I'm impressed.
It's a rite of passage on Merseyside
We have lots of this. Katie Lambert who plays for us is Lambo - she's 10.
I play football with a Tanno, and once had a game which had a Thommo, a Dutto, a Basco and two Stevo-s.
The mighty John Aldo Aldridge remains a notable media figure round these parts.
Might it be something to do with Irish immigration in the early to mid 20th Century?
"Stevo-s"...?
...surely you mean "Steveaux" there, Pads?
Don't forget
those other childish automotive abbreviations employed by Jezza Clarkson (see what I did there?) and his ilk.
Beemer - BMW
Maser - Maserati
Landie - Land Rover
Rangie - Range Rover
Disco - Land Rover Discovery
Fezza - Ferrari
Porker - Porsche (there's even a Porsche discussion forum of that name)
Pug - Peugeot
BBC Radio Essex have a DJ.
This is how he is described on the BBC's website.
"He is wacky, he is zany and he is the two time winner of the prestigious Sony Radio Award for best local DJ.
He is one of the best DJs on the local airwaves today! (He says)."
He calls himself Timbo.
I will never listen to this man.
All right thinking people would agree with you.
It's an affront. And should be punished appropriately.
Timbo the Himbo?
...
Timbo
Only a lumberjack should have that name.
I thought it was what...
...Australians shouted when they cut down a tree.
I missed this thread too and had the following thoughts
1. Surely David is just playing to see if people really do just respond to any thread he starts. If so, hilarious, well played. Then I noticed it was from 2008.
2. I just wrote 'Uni' in another thread. Apparently, I am thick to do so. Where I come from, it would be almost pretentious to stick with the full form: "well, of course at university we considered Foucault's attack on the very notion of an intrinsic,, stable identity..." VS "yeah - we did a bit of Foucault at uni."
3. Some joke that I couldn't form about Hawaii Five-O.
'Uni'
...I never called it that, myself. In fact, the first time I heard the phrase was on 'Neighbours' some time in the 80s. Since then it's pervaded the world like a disease. it's a very unlovely word. Personally, I'd never use it.
Well as I recall it was always
Uni' in the 1980s, even at proper Uni's, and poly's still existed then.
Only a complete wombato banged on about going to The Varsity.
I always have to remind myself
that when I'm reading The Wordo, it's actually The Word.
Sometimes I read the Moj though.
What about
the growing trend of adding the terminally naff suffix "vegas" to otherwise mundane place names to presumably add a little ironically humorous glamour?
Just to name a few: Skeg Vegas for Skegness, Chez Vegas for Chesterfield (two for the price of one there) and of course Glasvegas, the band.
Glasvegas...
...don't get me started!
Further to the "Uni" discussion
When I was at a place of tertiary education back in the early seventies, in a land far far away called New Zealand, we called it "Varsity". Has that word ever been heard or used anywhere else?
I first became aware of "Uni" through Australian friends (also back in the 70's)
And while I now live in Australia, I notice when I return to NZ that people now universally use the word "Uni".
Funny old world
Yes
Usually by Ox-Bridge types. The Woosters and Peter Whimseys of the world went to The Varsity.
I blame
Neighbours for the introduction of 'uni'.
Specifically 'Mike's uni friends'.
This could be useful for the OED, Mousey...
....the finger of suspicion is now firmly pointing at Australia for this least lovely of word aberrations! Except that unlike tinnies, barbies and Billy Thorpe, 'uni' has now conquered the English speaking world...
I know DH said
Australia is "for another time" but there are a great many word abbreviations far, far uglier than "Uni" alive and well down under.
There's Journo, for example.
I won't detain you with a long list here, but the most unlovely contraction known to man is surely the one for Fireman or Firefighter:
It's pronounced "Fiery" but actually spelled Fire-ie (or Firee).
It's crap, isn't it? It fails on every level imaginable (spelling, pronunciation, even the way it looks on the page) yet it's in common usage and is regularly heard on the TV news.
Even worse is "ambo"
for the ambulance drivers or paramedics
I hate it.
Especially when people of my profession are lumped together as "musos".
Even worse is "ambo"
for the ambulance drivers or paramedics
I hate it.
Especially when people of my profession are lumped together as "musos".
Yes!
I must have expunged "ambos" from my memory. But you're right, it's just as crap as Firee/Fire-ie.
And don't get me started on muso!
"lumped together as "musos"..."
...when clearly it should be 'Mousos'. It's disgraceful! :-)
When the 'O' Police
catch up with all the transgressors, they'll end up in Gitmo.
I can hear the prosecutors now...
...(obviously all Aussies... or, er, Ozos):
"Heppo? Ello? Frazo? You stand bango-ed to rightso for having no beardos on the cover of The Wordo for, oh... too bloody longo, mateo. It's off to Gitmo you trio till that Pommie pinko from the Special AKO starts a demo with all that "Free, Free Heppo And Ello" imbroglio. Er, no - not Natalie Imbroglio - if I'd meant that I'd have said 'Natalie Imbroglio-lo, ya wacko..."
Why am I thinking of
all the o's and aussi's you could hope for