A question keeps nagging. What would an Italian learning English make of what I have before me, a piece by Simon Price in the London Guardian of August 28:
“Stop the celebrations–-Oasis are the most damaging pop-cultural force in recent British history”
The headline comes at us hackles raised. The author’s anger may be justified, but we are going to ignore it. My concern is rather that the novelty of the vocabulary, which touches the marrow of contemporary Britain, will flummox our learners. I’ll try to help.
“Punch and Judy bickering” Clear? The Gallagher Bros stayed in the news after their original success by squabbling with each other like the yaking puppets of yore.
“Britpop’s coming home.” Ironic reference to British football fans’ slogan before recent international competitions. The meaning was that the victor’s trophy was going to come back to the UK, which was, after all, the birthplace of the sport, blah, blah. The trophy never arrived.
“Queer and lesbian” These epithets are generally understood. However, note that lesbians are now also called queer.*
Batty boys and bum chums need explaining. The first is West Indian for a gay man. The second denotes anus orientated lovers.
“Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn” The first is a centrist Labour politician. The second has sympathies farther left. Neither is anything near a communist, “fucking” or not.
“‘effin’ woke snowflake” Put a F before effin and a G after it. Then guess.
“snowflake” A person with no more staying power than a particle of snow on the Fourth of July.
“woke” Anyone who disagrees with rightwing populist bullshit.
“W-word” Take your choice, Whore or wanker. The latter can mean jerk, dolt, or someone given to masturbation.
“flag-shaggers and Reform voters” Someone so nationalist they would have sexual intercourse with their country’s flag. For instance, a voter for the UK Reform Party.
“butcher’s apron” One definition offered on the Internet: “The Butcher's Apron is a pejorative term for the flag [The Union Jack] common among Irish republicans, citing the blood-streaked appearance of the flag and referring to atrocities committed in Ireland and other countries under British colonial rule.”
“lads-lads-lads clichés” Lad culture is exemplified by male groups that inspired by alcohol give voice to their opinions to the extent that their literacy permits. They are sexist and racist. They are also homophobic and misogynistic—words they can’t manage to spell.
“knuckle-dragging ideas” A slur on apes who may have long arms but keep their far ends clear of the ground. Nor do they bore us with their ideas.
“brontosaurus-bottomed waddle” A brontosaurus had too much neck and tail bookending its sagging belly to move in anything but a waddle. However, the Gallagher Bros could challenge the article. For this model of dinosaur had no bottom, which is sine qua non of waddling. The beast was without an arse, or, as some of our expats would say, it was an ass-less wonder.
“adult-nappy gait” A grownup in a nappy would be a slow walker. It’s another reference to the Bros’ music sub-Rock velocity. Some elder readers might bemoan the insensitivity here and confess that they wear a diaper for the same reason an infant does.
“Alka-Selzer rhyme” Jingles advertising this anti-acid pill used to appear along American highways. So here it simply means the most shameful attempt at poetry ever.
“funkless…plod” Funk once meant a great stink. Then, in a thoughtful century, the expression in a funk meant feeling in the dumps. Now it is praise for African America music that evokes unwashed shirts and sweating arm pits.
plod repeats the charge that the Bros’ tinkle is not frisky enough for R & R. tinkle in this explanation means…and so on forever.
“your lager” British beer was traditionally thick, some of it even black as coal. It was served at room temperature (pre-adequate heating) as an antidote to the chill damp national weather (pre-climate change). Lager was an exotic ‘ladies drink’ like syrupy vermouth in America. Before the 1960s, visiting effeminate Frenchmen might request a lager and make a face when it was warm. Everything changed with ‘Swinging London’. Little England went international and was no longer above dropping the temperature of its drink. Such is the force of progress and conformism, principles eagerly discarded in the pursuit of gain.
So, voilà, I have cleared up some obscurities of language, while adding to their number.
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*Note
The word history of queer is fascinating. When William Burroughs wrote his novel so entitled in 1952, he accepted that the word was viscously pejorative but relished throwing it in readers’ faces with pride. When the novel was finally published in 1985, the word had become a more familiar and less judgemental way of saying homosexual. Now in 2024, when the novel Queer has been made into the movie Queer, the noun finds itself like a philoprogenitive grandfather who has planted a family-tree become a forest. The New York Times wrote on July 12, 2016:
“Plainly, we are in the midst of a profoundly exhilarating revolution. And “queer” has come to serve as a linguistic catchall for this broadening spectrum of identities […].”
Not only have we become used to universities granting degrees in Queer Studies. There are organisations called The Irish Queer Archive and The Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees. Relaxing from a queerplatonic relationship, one can watch a celebrated cartoon film called Queer Duck.
At the same time, in parallel, the respectable branch of the family has continued on its centuries old rather dull way with queer as an adjective (peculiar, false, dubious) and as a verb (to thwart, unnerve, unsettle).
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