WORLD SILLYweek Launceston: June 2023

Thursday, June 22, 2023

ANOTHER SILLYthursday EXPOSURE

“I wish I hadn’t cried so much!” said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. “I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.”

SILLY THURSDAY ACTIONS

PLEASE CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

SILLY WEDNESDAY ADVICE

AN OBSERVATION

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

A KEY KICK ARSE PISS REFERENCE

1Sam.25 [22] So and more also do God unto the enemies of David, if I leave of all that pertain to him by the morning light any that pisseth against the wall.

[34] For in very deed, as the LORD God of Israel liveth, which hath kept me back from hurting thee, except thou hadst hasted and come to meet me, surely there had not been left unto Nabal by the morning light any that pisseth against the wall

1Kgs.14 [10] Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, and will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung, till it be all gone.

1Kgs.16 [11] And it came to pass, when he began to reign, as soon as he sat on his throne, that he slew all the house of Baasha: he left him not one that pisseth against a wall, neither of his kinsfolks, nor of his friends.

1Kgs.21 [21] Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy posterity, and will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel,

2Kgs.9 [8] For the whole house of Ahab shall perish: and I will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel:

2Kgs.18...[27] But Rab-shakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you.

Isa.36...[12] But Rabshakeh said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?

Sunday, June 18, 2023

PISS POOR

31 December 2015

The use of piss as an intensifier appears in the mid twentieth century U. S. slang. The first recorded use is in Ezra Pound’s Cantos LII–LXXI, lxix., which contains the line: " Bingham, Carrol of Carrolton Gone piss-rotten for Hamilton Cabot, Fisher Ames [etc.]."

Why exactly piss is used in this fashion is uncertain, but it’s probably for the shock value.

The first use of the phrase piss poor itself is found in the archives of the OED, where it is recorded in the writing of A. L. Hench in 1946: Piss-poor… Jim Constantine (...formerly sergeant in Air Corps in West Indies) told me this morning that this word was used by all the soldiers he came in contact with as descriptive of a thing in its lowest condition… E.g. This is a piss-poor outfit. My job is a piss-poor one. .

Other uses of piss- from the mid century are piss-chic, piss-elegant, and piss-easy.

A similar phrase is not to have a pot to piss in, indicating extreme poverty. This one is recorded a bit earlier than piss poor, with the OED having a citation from 1934. It appears in a typescript of Djuna Barnes 1936 novel Nightwood: ... My heart ache

The combination and the alliteration of the two phrases probably helped piss poor survive while its other early counterparts have not become part of the lexicon.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the old email hoax Life in the 1500s floating about. A series of false etymologies of common terms, the hoax dates back to 1999, and I spent an entire chapter debunking it in Word Myths. But yesterday my brother sent me a link to a version that popped up on an internet site recently. (I’m not providing the link because I don’t want to drive traffic to the site.) For the most part, it’s a word-for-word repetition of the old hoax, but it does add one new term piss poor. The site claims the phrase comes from the practice of poor people collecting and selling their urine for use in tanning animal hides, and that those who were really, really poor, didn’t have a pot to piss in.

It is true that urine, which is acidic, was once used in tanning leather. It helped loosen tissue and hair that remained on the skins and softened the hide. Urine was also used in production of dye and of gunpowder and for other purposes. But these uses all but disappeared in the nineteenth century with the advent of modern chemistry and the ability to produce artificial substitutes cheaply and efficiently. So this old practice is not the origin of the phrase piss poor or not having a pot to piss in, which both appear long after the practice of using urine in industrial production had ended.

Sources: Kumar, Mohi. “From Gunpowder to Teeth Whitener: The Science Behind Historic Uses of Urine.” Smithsonian.com. 20 August 2013.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, third edition. s. v. piss, n. June 2006; pot, n1. December 2006.