In the news - Tossers and prats need public help

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:37 PM -0500 1/3/07, Wilson Gray wrote:
>I've heard that it's from "gardy-loo," a garbling of (Norman-? /
>Anglo-?)French, _gardez-l'eau!_, "watch [out for] the water!" shouted
>by people on upper stories to warn passers-by as they emptied their
>slop jars, also known as "chamber pots," into the street below.
>
>-Wilson

These are nice stories (I'm familiar with both, especially Alison's),
but I figure there's a reason the OED, HDAS, AHD, et al. list it as
"origin unknown" .

LH

>On 1/3/07, Alison Murie <sagehen at westelcom.com> wrote:
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       Alison Murie <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
>>Subject:      Re: In the news - Tossers and prats need public help
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>>* Ananova: *    *http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2141954.html?menu=
>>>Tossers and prats need public help* Jan. 3, 2007
>>>
>>>The public are being challenged to find the origins of 40 well-known words
>>>such as prat, wally and tosser.
>>>
>>>Editors of the Oxford English Dictionary also need to source words like
>>>hoodie, dogging, pole dance, spiv and loo.
>>  ~~~~~~~
>>Loo?  It doesn't devolve from "watercloset" by way of "Waterloo"?
>>AM
>>
>>~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>
>>
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>
>
>--
>All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>-----
>-Sam'l Clemens
>
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