[Ads-l] "Mental", n

[Yagoda, Ben]

“Mental” is a favorite word of (Canadian) Martin Short’s Ed Grimley character, I must say, so much so that the animated cartoon series based on the character was called “The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley.”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094442/

Ben

On Jan 25, 2017, at 10:15 AM, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM<mailto:JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM>> wrote:

---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU<mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>>
Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM<mailto:JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM>>
Subject:      Re: "Mental", n
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On Tue, 24 Jan 2017 06:21:43 Zone + 0000 Robin Hamilton <robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM<mailto:robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM>>
wrote:

in Glasgow Urban Speech, "mental" denotes a specific
*kind* of insanity -- a mental boy would be a berserkganger, someone
liable to go bananas at the drop of an accent.

Is this why, in the Harry Potter books, one of Ron Weazley's favorite expressions is to say
someone is "mental"?  Joanne "J. K." Rowling lived in Glasgow for many years and may have
picked up the term from Glasgow Urban Speech.

- Jim Landau


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