{"id":449,"date":"2008-03-24T18:34:45","date_gmt":"2008-03-24T18:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=449"},"modified":"2012-05-03T20:20:58","modified_gmt":"2012-05-03T19:20:58","slug":"not-just-semantics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=449","title":{"rendered":"Not just semantics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are expressions which, when used in different &#8211; perhaps less &#8216;mainstream&#8217; walks of life &#8211; that take on different shades of understanding.<\/p>\n<p>It is possible &#8211; even common &#8211; that some of these expressions may have originated in these less &#8216;mainstream&#8217; places.<\/p>\n<p>A number of examples spring to mind:<br \/>\n* &#8216;mind your Ps and Qs&#8217; being one, it originated in medieval Alehouses where &#8216;mind your pints and quarts&#8217; was a reference to underselling quantities when The Revenue came to check the landlord was fulfilling his duty correctly.<\/p>\n<p>* &#8216;getting a good spanking&#8217; being another, it referred to a common kind of injury that a &#8216;spanker monkey&#8217; or, to give the job of work the full and correct title &#8216;spinnaker monkey&#8217; (being a trainee seaman on a British Man-o&#8217;-War) would receive if the spanker (spinnaker sail) was hoisted carelessly.<\/p>\n<p>However on the other side of the fence there are occasionally words and phrases used incorrectly by people who fail to realise the full detail of what they&#8217;re trying to communicate.<\/p>\n<p>For example the phrase &#8216;bolted off with me&#8217; is often &#8211; and incorrectly &#8211; used to describe what happens when a horse fails to respond to &#8216;braking&#8217; signals from the rider.<\/p>\n<p>The correct phrase to describe this event is &#8216;ran through the bridle&#8217; &#8211; as in &#8216;the horse ran through the bridle&#8217; &#8211; i.e. took on a mind of its own and refused to listen to the rider.<\/p>\n<p>But in the less polite (shall we say&#8230; earthier?) equestrian circles a compound verb is also &#8211; correctly &#8211; used.<\/p>\n<p>It is: &#8216;pissed off&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>For example: That fucking horse pissed off with me this afternoon. We were coming up the big hill when he slipped from racing canter in to his &#8220;full-on, get your tits out for the lads fucking gallop&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Such a tale is usually supplemented with a phrase similar to: No kidding, I was shitting fucking bricks as big as loaves. We tanked right across the fields at a hundred fucking miles an hour. I thought I was going to fucking die! We came at the hedge at the end of the field so fucking quickly I didn&#8217;t know whether to sit in, put my legs on and ask him to jump it (and lose my testicles in the jumping action because I was sitting on a fucking dressage saddle not a fucking jumping one!), or put both hands on one rein and try and haul him around in a circle to make the mad bastard stop.<\/p>\n<p>Of course the use of the noun &#8216;fucking&#8217; is optional, but it does add colour and depth.<\/p>\n<p>This afternoon Vin &#8216;pissed off&#8217; with me.<\/p>\n<p>As I am still in possession of my testicles, you might correctly surmise that hauling him around in a two-handed circle worked.<\/p>\n<p>Which it did.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually.<br \/>\n\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>B<\/strong><\/em><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are expressions which, when used in different &#8211; perhaps less &#8216;mainstream&#8217; walks of life &#8211; that take on different shades of understanding. It is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}