Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Caley Jim]

29 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

QANTAS - no U in QANTAS  .......

 

It's a straight out name derived from Queensland And Northern Territory Air Services.

My sincere apologies. I do know its derivation. The 'U' went in as an automatic reaction to the 'Q'. Again, my apologies for any offence caused. I stand chastised. 

 

Jim 

 

 

[Caley Jim]

Winter's came ra snaw has fell.... 

 

 

Jim 

[drmditch]

1 hour ago, Caley Jim said:

My sincere apologies. I do know its derivation. The 'U' went in as an automatic reaction to the 'Q'. Again, my apologies for any offence caused. I stand chastised. 

 

Jim 

 

 

Shame proper nouns are not allowed in Scrabble.

[Compound2632]

4 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

Winter's came ra snaw has fell.... 

 

Hoping to see the snow ploughs out on Kirkallanmuir.

[Caley Jim]

Kirkallanmuir is set in late spring, though that doesn't guarantee anything!

 

I sent that photo to my son, currently working near Peterborough.  'Starting to sleet down here, so everything will be at a standstill shortly' was his reply!

 

Jim

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

11 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

My sincere apologies. I do know its derivation. The 'U' went in as an automatic reaction to the 'Q'. Again, my apologies for any offence caused. I stand chastised. 

 

Jim 

 

 

 

No need to apologise - you are certainly not the first. 

[Edwardian]

Goodbye to "Essex girl"

 

 

When I was young, a staple type of joke was the Essex girl joke, usually crudely sexual, one of the least offensive by way of illustration for those unfamiliar with the oeurvre, might be "What do Essex girls use for protection during sex? Bus shelters".

 

Naturally enough, women from Essex found this offensive, leading to a Movement to clear their reputation. Well, you don't mess with Dame Helen Mirren - Southend girl - do you?

 

“Essex girl” entered the OED in 1997, defined as “a supposed type of young woman… variously characterised as unintelligent, promiscuous and materialistic.”

 

In 2016 there was a petition to remove the term.  The OED stood fast.

 

Now, however, the entry is to be dropped, not because the OED has bowed to pressure that it perpetuates an offensive stereotype, but apparently because the term has fallen out of common usage.

 

Don't tan-bed girls in white stiletos dance round handbags anymore? How the world has changed!  

 

 

Edited December 5, 2020 by Edwardian

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

“Essex girl” entered the OED in 1997, defined as “a supposed type of young woman… variously characterised as unintelligent, promiscuous and materialistic.”

 

In 2016 there was a petition to remove the term.  The OED stood fast.

 

Now, however, the entry is to be dropped, not because the OED has bowed to pressure that it perpetuates an offensive stereotype, but apparently because the term has fallen out of common usage.

 

That's how dictionaries work. I should know: I married one. 

 

Dictionary, that is, not Essex Girl.

 

Lexicographer, to be absolutely clear.

 

I suspect though that your report is garbled. I doubt the term is being removed from the OED, which is an historical dictionary of record and hence a repository of outmoded terms. How is a future reader to understand a 1990s newspaper without being able to look up the meaning of the term? I suspect it's been removed from dictionaries of current English such as OED, COED, and ODCE. This is no doubt part of a programme to indicate clearly words and phrases that are offensive to various sections of society - always based on evidence of usage, not wokeness, of course.

 

I regret to report, however, that it is in the 10th Edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, published this year and edited by herself. It is marked humorous, disapproving but not offensive. I shall raise the matter when I take the tea upstairs now.

 

[NB @Edwardian laughed at the first three lines before I added the additional information.]

 

Edited December 5, 2020 by Compound2632

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

19 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Goodbye to "Essex girl"

 

 

 

 

 That's unfortunate, in current circumstances they're the sort of broads who think Trump's the second coming .........

[Compound2632]

Just now, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 That's unfortunate, in current circumstances they're the sort of broads who think Trump's the second coming .........

 

After the first coming they'll have any down-and-out.

[DonB]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I suspect though that your report is garbled.

 

 

A Lawyer producing such a report? ... NEVER let it be said !  (My Daughter is a Lawyer and Granddaughter has recently been accepted for a training contract to follow in her Mother's footsteps )

[wagonman]

On 03/12/2020 at 11:25, Welchester said:

 

I rather admire the one on the right in this photograph, who's saying, 'Watch your step my lad or you're for it.'

 

Mmm. Nice frock.

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, DonB said:

 

A Lawyer producing such a report? ... NEVER let it be said !  (My Daughter is a Lawyer and Granddaughter has recently been accepted for a training contract to follow in her Mother's footsteps )

 

It seems I have intruded upon matters dear to Compound.

 

My report is in essence as reported on R4's Today Programme, which I was listening to at the time, I simply went online to capture the definition. 

 

I make no comment other than it seemed a mildly interesting piece of trivia.  It shows that the protestors did get their way in the best possible way; in modern usage, or meme, terms, 'Essex girl' is no longer a byword for the negative attributes of the past.  I suppose we've had Ladettes and WAGs and, doubtless, other terms since for what society deems to be outré on the part of young women. 

 

As it happens, I'm writing a novel mainly about 4 young women, a subject about which I know nothing, but like all good barristers, I set about my brief with masterful if misplaced confidence nonetheless. These young ladies are a little different, however, as they mainly kill people.  But that, as they say, is another story ... 

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I shall raise the matter when I take the tea upstairs now.

 

Well, that was unwise. 

 

It transpires that this news item does pertain to the 10th edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. This is, as its title indicates, a dictionary for non-English speakers learning the language and is produced by a different division of OUP to that responsible for the OED and its progeny. Lexi (as I will denominate her for the nonce*) is mostly concerned that she'll be feeling the full weight of the OED's disapprobation for inadvertently dragging them into the story, which I gather made it to Today on Radio 4 this morning.

 

I overheard the decision to remove "Essex girl" just as I got home from work yesterday afternoon. There is as I mentioned an ongoing programme of revising definitions that are sexist, racist, etc. (particularly the register tagging where they're not already marked offensive or derogatory). In this particular case, there had recently been correspondence with a journalist from The Times. (True Murdochian hypocracy given that it was largely The Sun that established the term in popular usage in the first place.) Lexi's intention had been to re-write the definition but on looking in the corpus realised that its frequency is now so low that it wouldn't merit inclusion if it was a new word. (Remember the target audience of this dictionary.) So she has removed it from the database. That won't feed through into the online version of the dictionary until the next quarterly update in February. Lexi is also annoyed that it had slipped through into this edition of the dictionary and even more annoyed with the former colleague who wrote the definition and put it in the 7th edition back in 1997.

 

At least I now know why I got a bad night's sleep. She'd been tossing and turning over this all night. I hope that's going to be the only time a decision made in this household reaches the national news!

 

*I told you I'd married the dictionary.

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

It seems I have intruded upon matters dear to Compound.

 

Well, affecting domestic harmony, anyway.

 

4 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

IIt shows that the protestors did get their way in the best possible way; in modern usage, or meme, terms, 'Essex girl' is no longer a byword for the negative attributes of the past.  I suppose we've had Ladettes and WAGs and, doubtless, other terms since for what society deems to be outré on the part of young women. 

 

What vexes Lexi particularly is the suggestion that such protest has influenced the content of the dictionary - that would be a triumph of sentiment over truth. The word was to stay, with a revised definition, until it was found to be now so infrequent - but that is, as you say, a triumph of a different sort.

 

8 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

My report is in essence as reported on R4's Today Programme, which I was listening to at the time, I simply went online to capture the definition. 

 

I make no comment other than it seemed a mildly interesting piece of trivia. 

 

No blame is attached to you.

[Caley Jim]

4 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

 That's unfortunate, in current circumstances they're the sort of broads who think Trump's the second coming .........

Brace yourselves!  In four years time his 'second coming' could still happen!

 

Anyone taking bets on his last words on Inauguration Day being 'I'll be back!'?

 

Jim

[Nearholmer]

The thing is, he hasn’t gone yet, and he is convinced he’s won, so until he’s actually evicted it isn’t over, and in his deluded mind there’s everything to fight for.

 

Essential reading.

 

 

Edited December 5, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Regularity]

Is Andy York in it?

[Edwardian]

1 minute ago, Regularity said:

Is Andy York in it?

 

Clearly you like to live dangerously.

 

For my part, I prefer .....

 

 

 

 

[Regularity]

23 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Is Andy York in it?

 

18 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Clearly you like to live dangerously.

Merely reflecting on the fact that anyone taking on such a monumental task as running this forum is clearly a few shades short of a full palette...

 

(And anyone who thinks they would effectively rule it, is definitely deficient in the marbles department.)

 

I do know of what I speak, having undertaken the thankless task of setting one up myself.

Edited December 5, 2020 by Regularity
Running this forum, not ruining it...

[Edwardian]

Best deluded despot is Robin Williams in the 1988 Munchausen film.  As King of the moon he promotes himself to "Re di Tutti, but you can call me Ray"

[Adam88]

7 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

The thing is, he hasn’t gone yet, and he is convinced he’s won, so until he’s actually evicted it isn’t over, and in his deluded mind there’s everything to fight for.

 

Essential reading.

 

 

 

How up-to-date is this book?

 

[Nearholmer]

Its a book that will always be out of date, however frequently its revised.

 

 

 

Edited December 5, 2020 by Nearholmer

[CKPR]

17 hours ago, Regularity said:

I do know of what I speak, having undertaken the thankless task of setting one up myself.

Edited 5 hours ago by Regularity

And that of which we cannot speak, thereof we should remain silent. Sound advice that most people, including many in my trade, consistently ignore.

Edited December 6, 2020 by CKPR

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, CKPR said:

And that of which we cannot speak, we should remain silent. Sound advice that most people, including many in my trade, consistently ignore.

Sadly (for everyone else!) I have drunk from many cups.

Edited December 6, 2020 by Regularity
Spilled from most of them.