The Bluestocking: the one where AI finally learns what a blackbird is (we hope)

[Magpiecomplex]

Welcome all, New Year (nearly), new thread!

If they have too many to cope with they will kill the smallest to make mealtimes more manageable. . . . . . Other than that they're excellent parents

and Mumsnet styles itself as 'by parents for parents'

Masterly comment though, up there with the Ladybird book's description of Oliver Cromwell as: a good man, deeply religious and neither greedy nor — except in Ireland — cruel.

Could you imagine if Mrs Coot wrote an AIBU?

The other thing about coots is that they are, apparently, represented by the Q in LBGTQ++
I sometimes vaguely wondered - but it was in the 'things-I-don't-know-but-don't-need-to-know' file - the origin of the expression 'queer as a coot' .

Now I'm thinking that 'queer as a coot' probably originally meant 'unconventional as a coot', and referred to their parenting practices.

Pedantry Corner, anyone?

Infanticide! I'd hate to see their float at the next Pride parade.

I think the male lions have bagged that role in the Pride parade.

When dh was working in London, one of the locos his depot was working on was going to Oxford, to be named City of Oxford, but when the chap turned up with the name plates, they had been misspelled - City of Oxfrod - so they had to do some quick letter removal and swapping overnight.

You are correct, though you can add "excited at" to "by" and "about". The only time that it could be considered correct is if you were to be excited for someone else and that would be an informal use.

It is correct that "queer" had an original meaning of being odd or strange and that "queer as a coot" meant odd. However, it is thought that the word queer came from "qweere" meaning white shield, and was first used by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales.

You can see the usage of queer as od or strange in the Yorkshire saying, "nowt so queer as folk", meaning nothing as strange as other people. [As an aside my DH and I both have extended family members who have behaved so badly that the incidents would be thought too extreme to be a soap opera plot. We then realised that every family has this so "now so queer as folk".]

Queer referring to gay people was a correct use of the term queer meaning strange, because it was considered queer to not be heterosexual. However, it was deemed a slur and still is in many gay communities, particularly those who were called queer in homophobic attacks. Queer today in terms of sexuality, seems to refer to those "spicy straights" who identify as the other sex, or are a bit "kinky", or who want to dye their hair blue or pink and hang around the cool woke kids. It is still deemed a slur by many in the gay community and should generally be avoided.

Thank you Myrtle, always a good companion in Pedantry Corner.

I'm fascinated by the possibility that 'qweere' could mean 'white shield' - I'm going to have to chase that down an etymological rabbit-hole

Queer is indeed one of those words that we can use if we want to, but it's not acceptable for those outside the community to use. Other examples exist..

Personally, I use it as a light-hearted response to somebody upon whom it has just dawned that I'm a lesbian [I think it's obvious but apparently it ain't necessarily so] 'Yes, you've guessed right - queer as a coot!' - or, as I live in the EU, 'queer as a nine-euro note'
But if someone said it to me in a clearly negative way, it would be offensive.
Either because it was intended to be homophobic, or because it was linking me to those 'spicy straights' you mention🙄

Tbh I think Alan Bennet may be the only person who is ok to use the word in whatever way he pleases.

It's interesting that you say "queer as a nine-euro note" because there is a very similar British idiom, "bent as a nine-bob note". [Nine-bob is 9 shillings. The closest note to 9 shillings was a 10-shilling note]. "Bent" in this case originally meant criminal or dishonest - my own understanding of the term also indicated open to bribery and corruption - because bent is the opposite of straight. The OED thinks that the use of straight to mean correct is a contamination of the Biblical saying "strait is the gate". Strait meaning a narrow passage of water or a state of trouble (dire straits) is often misspelled to straight, meaning that straitjacket gets corrected to straightjacket, which doesn't have the same connotation.

However, bent moved on to refer to gay people in the 1950s. e.g. is X gay? Yes, bent as a nine-bob note. I'm not clear if this then gave rise to the term "bender" as a gay man, or whether that word referred to gay men who bent over to receive sex. In Britain it is highly likely that both versions are true. We have a habit of extrapolating words from one source and then adapting it for use in another.

Interestingly, bender is also British slang for going out and getting very drunk - e.g. going on a bender.

The etymology of qweere is unclear.

Oh Myrtle, I'm afraid I'm old enough to remember ten-bob-notes!
I even remember two kinds, because Irish and British currency/coins/notes were used interchangeably in the republic of Ireland when I was a kid. We had a slight preference for an English tanner because it was so slim, like fairy-money, and the twelve-sided - was it twelve? - thruppeny bit was a bit special too. Ultimately, though, once it bought a sweet treat, we weren't too fussy!

I've been trying 'gweere' from lots of angles, the 'gw' looked Welsh, but there doesn't seem to be anything like that in Welsh. 'Gw' became 'f' in the Gaelic branch of the celtic languages [so 'gwynn' = 'fionn'] but I also can't find any Irish word like [f]eere. I tried a couple of Germanic languages on Google Translate, but no luck in that direction either.

Aren't words wonderful? Hours of fun in Pedantry Corner, chasing origins down the centuries, hot chocolate in one hand and a volume of the complete OED in the other [it's the Bluestocking, so we can manage that feat]

But can you remember the quare name of the great stuff?

Do you think if we get it out there that qweer/queer once meant 'white' then the wokerati might get the horrors and stop using it?

The thrupenny bit was indeed 12-sided! I am too young to remember it, but I do remember florins and shillings being used as 10p and 5p. I loved seeing the heads of different monarchs on the back and finding the dates they were minted.

To be a pedant, for that is what I am, and we are ensconced in Pedantry Corner, the word was QWeere, not GWeere. Perhaps that might help?

Also the complete second edition of the OED (the latest, though the third is in progress) has 20 volumes, so I rather think that if you have a single "complete" volume of the OED, then you are referring to the compact edition, which is a complete dictionary from A-Z but does not contain all the entries available in the complete second edition. The third edition was begun in 2000 and was half completed in 2018. It should be finished around 2036, but I am 99% confident that it will only be available electronically and will never be printed. Interestingly, all dictionary compilers include fake words that they put in so that counterfeit copies can be spotted.

Interestingly, all dictionary compilers include fake words that they put in so that counterfeit copies can be spotted.
Apparently mapmakers do the same, they include features which don't exist so they can spot copyright infringement.

I love this.

The thrupenny bit was indeed 12-sided!

They were very nice - a different colour (nickel-brass), with a couple of designs on the reverse - a portcullis on the ERII ones and the lovely (and perhaps appropriate) thrift on the earlier ones. They'd buy a finger of fudge when I was in primary school.

The fathing was before my time - exactly - but DF used to organise the Christian aid collections in the area and I'd help sort and count the coins and they'd show up from time to time. I was always delighted by the wrens, and also with random foreign coins.

I am old enough to remember pre decimal coinage, and was proficient in its use.
My husband cannot remember it at all. This makes me feel about as old as Queen Elizabeth I.

We used to search the gravelled area outside the corner shop for dropped coins, and the have episodes of deep concentration as decided between fruit salads/blackjacks, 4 for 1d, aniseed balls, 8 for 1d, sherbet fountains, 3d but easy to divide up the powder and the liquorice, or an oz of midget gems. There was also a nasty kind of chalky violet thing, and liquorice bootlaces.

I still wonder whether Marie remembers the 'quare name but great stuff' product.

Pink prawns too?
And 'Sports mixtures"

I had to google that, of course - which yielded this rather delightful piece

www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-20290978.html

The Puffling family discuss penny.sweets.

I must be the same era because I remember all of those except 'sports mixtures'. What about sherbet pips & Jap dessert, by the quarter? And sherbet lemons, which could destroy the roof of your mouth. And Jamboree bags, going further back in time.