[Ads-l] The Waugh Zone March 10, 2017

[Robin Hamilton]

... or a variant of Faugh! -- see GDoS:

faugh! excl.
also faw! figh! fogh! foh! fough! fugh! fuh! hough! paugh! pho(h)! phooh! pough!
pugh! wagh!
[early uses are no more than aggressive throat-clearing, but later uses (perhaps
mid-19C+) seem likely to be a euph. for fuck! excl.]
an excl. of dismissal, derision, anger or surprise.
c.1597 [UK] Shakespeare Merry Wives of Windsor I iii: ‘Steal!’ foh! a fico for
the phrase!

(I see that the OED entry for WAUGH (Intransitive) [from a1766] that you note
scouts the possibility of a faugh/waugh transition, but the GDoS entry makes
sense to me.)

The original quotation was from Paul Waugh, one of the Huffington Post [UK]
editors -- I came on the Unfortunately Overqualified Adverb earlier today via a
newsletter of his that I'm subscribed to, so I'm not sure if it's present
anywhere on the actual site.  URL for The Man Himself is: 

                          http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/paul-waugh 

It was a comment on his grammatical infelicity -- copying the post to ADS-l was
intended to rub salt in the wound.

(To be fair, I usually find his writing style quite acceptable, nicely light in
tone with some solid Brit-Political background, why I'm subscribed to his
newsletter.)

Back to chasing variants between the various editions of Hotton's _Slang
Dictionary_ between 1859 and 1873 ...

     Robin

[He -- Paul Waugh -- is possibly part of the Evelyn/Auberon Clan -- no doubt
Wiki would Reveal All, but I'm too lazy to look at this moment.  R.]

>     Is that quotation from Alec, Evelyn, Auberon, Alexander, or Daisy?
> 
> 
>     Or did you mean lower case, as in "waugh adj.", 'Tasteless, insipid;
> unpleasant to the smell or taste, sickly; faint, weak, etc.', or "waugh,
> int.", 'An exclamation indicating grief, indignation or the like'?
> 
> 
>     Joel
>      
> 
> 
> 
>     ---------------------------------------------
>     From: Robin Hamilton <robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM>
>     To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>     Sent: Friday, March 10, 2017 5:17 AM
>     Subject: Re: [ADS-L] The Waugh Zone March 10, 2017
> 
>     "... the Tory Right is much more better at organising a rebellion than the
> Tory
>     Left ..."
> 
>     If it's true that the more goods, the better, shouldn't this have read,
> "the
>     Tory Right is much more betterer at organising a rebellion than the Tory
> Left"?
> 
>     Robin Hamilton
> 
>     (whose mother taught him that the grey mare was simply much the better
> steed)
> 
>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>     The American Dialect Society -http://www.americandialect.org/
> 
> 
> 



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