In the news - Tossers and prats need public help

[Jonathan Lighter]

Lighter's Law (God, I Iove the sound of that!) : "No matter how widely promoted, the most colorful and imaginatively appealing etymology is likely to be wrong."

  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: In the news - Tossers and prats need public help
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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

On 1/3/07, Alison Murie wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Alison Murie
> 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
>
> ~@:> ~@:> ~@:> ~@:>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
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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