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.

Combo, for combination

And anyone who uses "Beat Combo" on here should be barred and beaten.

kb | 23 January 2008 - 4:43pm

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.

NeilJung | 17 February 2008 - 9:15pm

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

Twangothan | 23 January 2008 - 4:48pm

I want to...

kill myself after reading that. That is so sad. Poor you, having to listen to that all day.

Patrick Crowther | 23 January 2008 - 5:09pm

I'm, like, hating 'Jacko'

Makes the painted, bewigged nutcase sound like your mate from the pub. Overly chummy and wrong.

johnsey | 23 January 2008 - 4:55pm

Oh yes

"Jacko" is the unmistakable mark of the arriviste. It was only introduced long after he became a superstar.

David Hepworth | 23 January 2008 - 5:07pm

Surely it arrived alongside...

wacko

Patrick Crowther | 23 January 2008 - 5:25pm

And...

Ho

Patrick Crowther | 23 January 2008 - 4:58pm

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.

Oeufman | 23 January 2008 - 5:51pm

Gibbie

Similarly I have heard "Gibbie" which is as bad, and even worse, "git box" as a generic term for a guitar. Tossers.

Twangothan | 23 January 2008 - 6:21pm

as eny fule know

'tis "Axe".

Vulpes Vulpes | 24 January 2008 - 10:01am

Only if

you're 16, spotty and dream of being in Metallica.

Oeufman | 24 January 2008 - 10:03am

Too funny

....Heppo - and of course Ello, LO to his friends, unlimited opportunities for amusement of the "'Ello Ello" variety etc. Tee hee.

Twangothan | 23 January 2008 - 7:22pm

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".

Jamie_Bowman | 23 January 2008 - 6:08pm

The originator...

Patrick Crowther | 23 January 2008 - 6:19pm

A picture tells a thousand words

Dear oh dear.

Twangothan | 23 January 2008 - 6:22pm

And

that, children, is what happens when you stick your fingers in the socket.

Oeufman | 23 January 2008 - 6:23pm

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.

Retropath2 | 23 January 2008 - 6:32pm

LOL!

"I thought you were referring to the excellent advertisents for sheep and cow flesh, with the witty cartoon cricketers"

genius line.

Patrick Crowther | 23 January 2008 - 6:36pm

LOL!

LOL! is starting to do my head in actually

Stephen G | 23 January 2008 - 11:57pm

Yes...

you do have a point... but it is a convenient way of saying you find something funny.

Patrick Crowther | 24 January 2008 - 12:59am

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...

Stephen G | 24 January 2008 - 1:12am

That is very funny

you see... it's so much easier writing LO...

Patrick Crowther | 24 January 2008 - 8:38am

LOL confusion

Until relatively recently my wife thought "LOL" meant Lots of Love. Tricky things these acronyms...

David Ellcock | 24 January 2008 - 9:46am

So did I

Until a second ago. Not that I ever thought of it.

David Hepworth | 24 January 2008 - 1:22pm

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.

Patrick Crowther | 24 January 2008 - 1:27pm

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).

Fraser Lewry | 24 January 2008 - 1:34pm

LOIS

would be much better.

Patrick Crowther | 24 January 2008 - 1:42pm

As long as...

...ROTFLMAO never becomes acceptable currency outside all but the spoddiest of websites.

David Ellcock | 24 January 2008 - 1:46pm

Quite

right.

Fraser Lewry | 24 January 2008 - 1:50pm

"Uni"

"Uni".
Anyone who uses the ghastly word is toothickfor.
But then I suppose "Former Useless Polytethnic" is a bit of mouthful

Richard Lowe | 23 January 2008 - 7:58pm

I loathe "uni"

But it's what everybody uses, whether they're at Cambridge or the University of South Heckmondwike.

David Hepworth | 23 January 2008 - 8:13pm

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?

CarlP | 24 January 2008 - 9:36am

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.

Lucas Hare | 24 January 2008 - 8:35am

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.

Patrick Crowther | 23 January 2008 - 8:48pm

But not as much of a dump as..

the former North Staffordshire Polytechnic, where I survived two years.

Graham_Arden | 23 January 2008 - 10:59pm

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...

sweetleftfoot | 10 February 2008 - 6:08pm

Xmas

I hate Xmas.I won't go on but it just bugs me to hell.

Springer | 23 January 2008 - 8:20pm

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...

Patrick Crowther | 23 January 2008 - 9:03pm

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.

David Hepworth | 23 January 2008 - 8:26pm

Designers

To put them in their place just call them the "paste-up lads".
Especially if they're girls.

Richard Lowe | 23 January 2008 - 8:56pm

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.

Patrick Crowther | 23 January 2008 - 9:12pm

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.

feelingsinister | 24 January 2008 - 9:29am

Correct.

EVERYBODY knows the correct vernacular for curry is a 'Ruby'?

sweetleftfoot | 10 February 2008 - 6:10pm

Story of O

All my mates call me Carto.
It's a Dublin thing.

Pat Carty | 23 January 2008 - 9:25pm

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?

Chris G | 23 January 2008 - 10:53pm

I know

but mostly its just lazy Chris.

Springer | 24 January 2008 - 12:20am

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"

Graham_Arden | 23 January 2008 - 10:56pm

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......

Retropath2 | 24 January 2008 - 8:29am

I wonder

if this phenomenon was the origin of the American Tivo system.

Lucas Hare | 24 January 2008 - 8:36am

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?"

feelingsinister | 24 January 2008 - 9:32am

Return of Combo

Can I reclaim 'combo'? It's a great word.

I'll swap it for Beemer. Or Duffo.

Paul | 24 January 2008 - 12:12pm

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"?

Twangothan | 24 January 2008 - 1:03pm

Was...

Biffo the bear's monicker short for something then?

Patrick Crowther | 24 January 2008 - 1:11pm

"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?

Dave C | 24 January 2008 - 1:23pm

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).

kb | 24 January 2008 - 2:45pm

Surely

That's Waitro's?

David Ellcock | 24 January 2008 - 3:10pm

For your info

there's nowt wrong with vino.

Innit.

Vulpes Vulpes | 24 January 2008 - 3:21pm

Unless

you end up a wino

Sven | 24 January 2008 - 5:01pm

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...)

nick | 25 January 2008 - 7:00am

Sarvo

Apparently, "sarvo" is used by Australian's meaning "this afternoon". Absolutely vile.

Carl | 25 January 2008 - 1:44pm

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.

Vulpes Vulpes | 25 January 2008 - 2:26pm

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.

Lucas Hare | 25 January 2008 - 2:52pm

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.

CarlP | 26 January 2008 - 5:29pm

have we done...

panto and Bono?

James Blast | 25 January 2008 - 3:07pm

Dear old Bonio......

so much fun before he lost his "i".......

Retropath2 | 25 January 2008 - 3:41pm

U2's behind you!

Oh no they aren't!

Oh yes they are!

Oh no they aren't!

Oh yes they are!

Vulpes Vulpes | 25 January 2008 - 6:53pm

You have...

the edge on me in the humour department.

Patrick Crowther | 25 January 2008 - 7:08pm

Ronaldo or Clydenio?

Ask Rob.

Vulpes Vulpes | 25 January 2008 - 8:20pm

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

Producer Matt | 28 January 2008 - 12:50pm

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?

nick | 29 January 2008 - 7:38am

Ball park, infrastructure...

... bench mark, touch base with. We call them wa*k words in my office. Awful.

laddie | 29 January 2008 - 11:23am

Stepping up to the Plate

Helicoptor View, Win Win......Bullshit Bingo. Fantastic game!

Springer | 29 January 2008 - 3:20pm

Bullshit Bingo!

A game that really pushed the envelope. Great memories. Gave that one the Full Metal Jacket a few times.

sweetleftfoot | 10 February 2008 - 6:15pm

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.

Axekeith | 31 January 2008 - 6:01pm

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.

Bruised Mike | 29 January 2008 - 10:58pm

skelmersdale

there's a part of skem called pimbo.
very odd

bluewool | 29 January 2008 - 11:08pm

blame the moptops

did they start it all with ringo?

bluewool | 29 January 2008 - 11:25pm

"It's an 'O' living thing"

Wasn't there an orchestral pop combo with the moniker ELO?

andy gallant | 30 January 2008 - 12:03pm

More 'O'

What about 'sicko' and, of course, Mr Orbison himself 'The Big "O"'.

andy gallant | 30 January 2008 - 4:16pm

Cheerios

Known only as Cheeris in my house.

Axekeith | 31 January 2008 - 6:02pm

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.

NeilJung | 17 February 2008 - 9:16pm