grotty

[Paul Kusinitz]

It may seem improbable, but the long vowel is what struck me when I
learned it derived from grotesque.  I had seen it only in print and assumed 
it was a back vowel.  At any rate, I've heard it spoken often, always with
a long vowel.

Paul Kusinitz
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jonathon Green 
  To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
  Sent: Saturday, July 06, 2002 8:19 AM
  Subject: Re: grotty


  I very much doubt that Ringo would have used _grody_ in the 1960s, though
  his heavy Liverpudlian accent might well have distorted the double-'t into a
  'd'. And despite the NDAS, the 'o' in _grotty_ was/is always short. Further
  to my mention of the novelisation of 'Hard Day's Night', I note a writer on
  the net who suggests that it was not until HDN that the word was known at
  all:

  http://www.uta.fi/FAST/BIE/BI2/beatles.html

  And when exploring on the mere word-level of the film, one particular word
  mustn't be forgotten - the word grotty. This word actually came into public
  use from the film, just like the word fab came into general usage with the
  Beatles, who were constantly being referred to as the Fab Four (fab = short
  for fabulous)
  The word grotty is a short form of the word grotesque, and many people still
  believe that Alun Owen [the scriptwriter] actually invented the word, but he
  denies this and claims that "Liverpool invented the word". According to
  Owen, there was some famous character in Liverpool called "Grotty G.", who
  was called that because she seemed grotesque to other people. And since
  "everything gets abbreviated in Liverpool", as Owen put it, the word
  grotesque simply turned into the word grotty.

  BTW: For those who want to check the original pronunciation there is a .wav
  at

  http://www.angelfire.com/mi/geha3/wavs.html - click on 'It's dead grotty.'


  Jonathon Green