They're as self-centered as we are!

Robin Hamilton robin.hamilton2 at BTINTERNET.COM
Wed Nov 4 00:43:13 UTC 2009


>>A few thousand GHits for ["I|he|she|you|we knicked"]. Both in the
>>sense of "cut slightly" ("I knicked my leg|scrotum while shaving") and
>>"steal" ("We knicked a Tesco trolley to use as a barbeque").
>>
> I figure this spelling (esp. in the UK, and in particular for the
> scrotum cite) may well be processed as a back-formation from
> "knickers" (the standard locution for what we call 'underpants' and
> 'panties' on this side of the pond), although I have to concede that
> the semantic shift requires some ingenuity.
>
> LH

Thus the joke:

        What's the difference between a fraud squad detective and an
hysterical woman?

        One puts twisters in the nick, and the other gets her knickers in a
twist.

Robin Hamilton

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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