Surfing Lingo & more

Bapopik at AOL.COM Bapopik at AOL.COM
Mon Apr 23 12:35:34 UTC 2001


SURFING LINGO

   From the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, Travel & Resorts section, 13 June 1965, pg. 12, col. 7:

   _The Lingo_
   The printable surfing slang is an amusing and bewildering aspect of the sport.  To the beginner or non-surfer it seems without a practical purpose, but other sports have their special terminologies.  There are "birdies" in golf, "sitzmarks" in skiing, "homers" in baseball.  "Scratching" is rapid paddling, perhaps to get "outside" of a "clean-up wave" (a big one that breaks and rolls over surfers shoreward of it, thus knocking them off their boards).  A fast surfboard for big surf is made long and narrow, and is a "gun" or "elephant gun."  Naturally, then, a surfer who seeks out the large waves or "heavies" is a "big-game hunter."  Surfers do not ride waves at an angle to shore standing on the ends of their boards, but "hang ten" over the "nose," "trimming" their "sticks" to "school" the "curl," possibly "proning out" or "grabbing a rail" to keep from "pearling."  Sometimes the "skeg" (rudder) snags on "kelp" (seaweed).  The worst spill is going "over the falls" into the "so!
up" and the greatest disgrace is
 to retrieve a board washed onto shore.  "Noahs" (sharks) are (Col. 8--ed.) always to be avoided.  The height of this language is its description of the better surfing waves.  Advancing but still unbroken waves are "swells," so on days when they are especially large and well-formed, they are "good swells."

--------------------------------------------------------
HOT DOG (continued)

   Cartoon caption of two children commenting on dad's tripping over a skateboard, NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, 11 May 1965, pg. 23, col. 1:

"I DIDN'T KNOW POP COULD HOT DOG."

--------------------------------------------------------
SURVIVOR SYNDROME

   OED has 1968.
   From the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, 2 May 1965, pg. 20, col. 2:

_The "Survivor Syndrome"--_
_Auschwitz Reverberations_

--------------------------------------------------------
SUPERMARKET

   From the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE (obituaries), 23 May 1965, pg. 38, col. 5:

_Samuel Cooke, "Father of the Supermarket"_
(...)  He started what he said was the first self-service food store, in West Philadelphia in the (Co. 6--ed.) 1930s.  There have been other claimants of the honor, but there is no doubt that Mr. Cooke was a pioneer in the supermarket business.
   That first store grew into the Penn. Fruit Co., which has little to do with fruit, but had a chain of 80 food stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and New York.  There are seven such self-service Penn Fruit supermarkets in the metropolitan New York area.

--------------------------------------------------------
BOP (BALANCE OF PAYMENTS)

   "BOP" is not in the OED.
   From the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, 28 March 1965, section 3, pg. 5, col. 1:

_BOP Medicine: How Bitter?_

--------------------------------------------------------
MARTIN'S MARKET

   From the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, 26 June 1965, pg. 18, col. 2:

   Federal Reserve Board chairman William McCheaney Martin, apparently smarting under criticism that he is responsible for the current decline in stock prices--dubbed by some as "Martin's Market,"--yesterday carefully avoided any comparisons of today's economy with one of the past.

--------------------------------------------------------
CURB YOUR DOG

   From the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, 1 April 1965, pg. 11, col. 3:

_"Curb Your Dog" Gutter Tactics_
By Gwen Gibson
   The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals tackled one of the city's more nagging problems yesterday by launching a "curb your dog" campaign aimed at making the 260,000 dogs of New York CIty more desirable, better-adjusted citizens.

--------------------------------------------------------
"MADAM, IF YOU WERE MY WIFE, I'D DRINK IT"

   From THIS WEEK magazine of the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, Charlie Rice's Punch Bowl, 11 April 1965, pg. 4, col. 2:

_Sir Winston_
_--what he did and didn't say_
(...)
4.  During a Parliamentary argument, Lady Astor burst out: "Mr. Churchill, if I were your wife, I'd put arsenic in your coffee!"
   To which Churchill replied: "Madam, if you were my wife, I'd drink it!"
TRUE
FALSE
(...)
(Pg. 5, col. 2--ed.)
4.  FALSE.  There is no record of such a Parliamentary exchange.  Moreover, Sir Winston and the beautiful, spirited Lady Astor were friends.  This joke is very old.  I can personally attest to hearing it when I was a boy.  At that time the lady was an ardent National League baseball fan (Brooklyn species) who became enraged by a decision made by Umpire Bill Klem.



More information about the Ads-l mailing list