Modern parlance

[Coops]

In this day and age when people are persisting in mangling the good old English language, can anyone tell me what the expression "sucks" is supposed to mean, i.e. as in (a recent forum posting) "Spain sucks".

 

[Lord Braykewynde]

It's another Americanism. I first became aware of it when I was a moderator on an international game site. Needless to say I took it in another way when someone in the chat room used it in a sentence which we here would take to mean something else. I gagged that person to stop them chatting but later had to eat humble pie when it was explained to me, apologise to that person and reinstate their chat

This wasn't the first time though. I also found out that fanny meant backside, bottom, bum

It got that I hated the taste of humble pie

'Sucks' means 'useless' .

 

[Dustydog]

It's another Americanism. I first became aware of it when I was a moderator on an international game site. Needless to say I took it in another way when someone in the chat room used it in a sentence which we here would take to mean something else. I gagged that person to stop them chatting but later had to eat humble pie when it was explained to me, apologise to that person and reinstate their chat

This wasn't the first time though. I also found out that fanny meant backside, bottom, bum

It got that I hated the taste of humble pie

'Sucks' means 'useless' .

And there's me thinking she was an old tv cook. I mean television not transvestite

 

[Coops]

Thanks a million. What a relief !!!

 

[Parksy]

With the ease of international communications between individuals via the internet and the influence of TV programmes the English language as we know it will be lucky to survive intact.
Even web browser spell checkers try to foist American spellings onto us unless you find and select an English UK spell checker.
I must admit to liking at least some foreign expressions though.
I rarely watch or listen to tv adverts but I caught one the other day that made me smile. It involved two Aussie surfer types sitting by a telephone answering questions from young men hoping to be like them.
I have no idea what was actually being advertised but this Brit phoned them because his male friend wanted him to rub suntan lotion onto his back.
Of course as we here in Blighty should know it's a very definite no no in the last bastions of chauvinistic homophobic male society and the Aussies laid down some 'conditions' before this suntan application could take place without a catastrophic loss of 'man points'.
The one that made me smile was when the Aussie ruled out any possibility of the suntan rubbing if the recipient was wearing what the Aussie called 'Budgie Smugglers'

I'll remember that one!

 

[Philspadders]

whats the issue? English has a language has been evolving for hundreds of years. Sarting with Old English it absorbed French, Spanish, German, Norse, Latin, Greek, and continues to do so.
American is just another language that we will absorb and use as part of our own languages organic nature.
Imagine if we still spoke or used Pepys English , i can just image air traffic controllers.....

I dont live on a cul de sac but i bet some on on here does.
I go to the restaurant sometimes.
Ever wondered why there are so many Avons in the south... avon mean river in old celtic.
Do you like mustard on your ham? Mustard is dervied from French
Do you read Practical Caravan Magazine ? Magazine is derived from the arabic word makhāzin whille caravan is derived for persian / urdu .
Revel in the fact that our language is constantly changing and fixed in the past like French (or the French.

)

 

[Parksy]

Imagine if we still spoke or used Pepys English , i can just image air traffic controllers.....

Could that be why there are no air traffic controllers here in the Black Country?

 

[OmOnWeelz]

I think some of you must have been leading very sheltered lives

"sucks" as slang terminology as it is currently understood has been around for around 50 years.
Parksy my cousin is an Air Traffic Controller at Birmingham airport and he lives in the Black Country.

 

[Parksy]

...................Parksy my cousin is an Air Traffic Controller at Birmingham airport and he lives in the Black Coutry.

I can just imagine your cousin advising an airliner to land....... "orl right me mon, cum on dahn eya ter Brummijum an lond on that runway over theer, when yone finished doe ferget ter goo dahn the steps otherwise you'll atta jump dahn, Tara me mon"

 

[Lord Braykewynde]

I think some of you must have been leading very sheltered lives

"sucks" as slang terminology as it is currently understood has been around for around 50 years.

Sorry Om but I disagree. Fifty years ago it had a totally different meaning and referred to an act by homosexuals and was used in a derogatory manner by heterosexuals. Now it has been toned down. Words change just as the word gay has

Another English word that isn't used so much in the UK is awesome but Americans seem incapable of completing a sentence without using it

 

[OmOnWeelz]

Sorry Lord B. but you are wrong, by the early seventies it was already getting to be in wider use to mean 'rubbish' by americans. I worked with americans first in 1971 and lived alongside them abroad then and thats when I came across it being used in that way and it was quite a common term then. Older yanks would look due to the former gay connotation when it was used but were already looked on as out of touch!
I understand that it had begun to change to its current terming in the early sixties and starterd to spread more and more that way during Vietnam conflict.

 

[OmOnWeelz]

Parksy.
He was originally a senior "officer and gentleman" in the forces where he was an air traffic controller. So no, he's never picked up the local twang

 

[Philspadders]

the use of the word "gay" to refer to same sex couples started in the 1920's even though many think it is a fairly recent change of use.

How about a scouser air traffic controller.." yuse can drop to 10,000 r kid"

Wunt world be a reet boring place if we all spoke like what she does in that reet big owse darn int big smoke.

 

[Lord Braykewynde]

Om, we are talking about the use of those words in the UK. How many on the forum are as wordly wise as your goodself in having worked here AND in the US with Yanks? Using that assumption then I think you are probably right, most of us have led sheltered lives

I also assume the OP hasn't worked with Americans, either in the UK or the States, else he wouldn't have asked the question.

 

[Lord Braykewynde]

the use of the word "gay" to refer to same sex couples started in the 1920's even though many think it is a fairly recent change of use.

I quote from a BBC website ..

"The word has had many meanings over the centuries, often sexual, says Clive Upton, professor of Modern English Language at Leeds University.
"In the early 19th Century it was used to refer to women who lived off immoral earnings," he says. Around the 1970s it was claimed by the homosexual community as a descriptive term for their sexual orientation, now its most popular meaning. By the 1980s it was finding its way into schools as a playground insult".

What happened before then and what they called themselves I'm not privy to because I wasn't a member of that community. Before this time the word 'gay' meant happy, carefree. For example around 1920 a racehorse won, I believe, the Derby. In the 1930s an express steam locomotive was named in it's honour. The name of the horse and locomotive was 'Gay Crusader'. Hardly a name that would be bestowed upon a thoroughbred racehorse and one of the best locomotives designed in this country if 'gay' had meant the present day meaning.

 

[Dustydog]

It's all madness!
Gap now means Gay and Proud
Gay means homsexual
Poof is slang for homo but was something my mum had to rest her feet on .
Bat for the other side has nothing to do with cricket any more
And so all this corruption goes on.
Bring back the good Queen's English I can understand

My Dyson sucks best I believe with no loss off suck shun

 

[OmOnWeelz]

Om, we are talking about the use of those words in the UK. How many on the forum are as wordly wise as your goodself in having worked here AND in the US with Yanks? Using that assumption then I think you are probably right, most of us have led sheltered lives

I also assume the OP hasn't worked with Americans, either in the UK or the States, else he wouldn't have asked the question.

I've never worked in the USA Lord B, and it's a destination I avoid as much as possible. I don't go to the cinema very often and its been used on US films andTV with its current understanding for years. I'm also not that keen on US film or TV. So I lead quite a sheltered life myself

 

[Parksy]

I think some of you must have been leading very sheltered lives

"sucks" as slang terminology as it is currently understood has been around for around 50 years.

Sorry Om but I disagree. Fifty years ago it had a totally different meaning and referred to an act by homosexuals and was used in a derogatory manner by heterosexuals. Now it has been toned down. Words change just as the word gay has

Another English word that isn't used so much in the UK is awesome but Americans seem incapable of completing a sentence without using it

I think that the expression 'it sucks' as used by Americans originally stems from the meaning of 'sucker' which was in common use in the US at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Confidence tricksters or fraudsters would 'suck people in' and the slang conotation for these gullible people was 'suckers'. Any individual or group of people held in contempt or considered to have been foolish or naive came to be called 'suckers'
This became shortened and the meaning of the verb 'sucks' altered and widened to mean things that were considered bad or of poor quality in the US during the late 1950s onwards.
Homosexuality was illegal in the US so the act that Lord B may have been referring to would never have been mentioned or even hinted at in mixed company and this holds true to some extent to the present day.
Americans are generally thought to be more socially conservative than Europeans and public references to homosexual practices would no doubt 'suck' to an awesome degree

 

[OmOnWeelz]

Having now done a little more research on this term, it seems that it originally had nothing to do with Gay but has in more recent times. It seems that it was used in relation to ladies of the night or if a lady was thought to be more 'adventurous'. By the mid sixties with young americans and Vietnam it had changed to its "rubbish" meaning and has been in pretty common wide every day use and in film an tv and more general family conversation since the 70's.
(I don't want to offend anyone or rock a family forum, I hope this passes the censor)

 

[Lord Braykewynde]

(I don't want to offend anyone or rock a family forum, I hope this passes the censor)

Well I'm certainly offended and such politically incorrect postings shouldn't be allowed in our diverse society. Also putting the blame on the Americans for the bastardisation of the English language is beyond comprehension. Is it any wonder that such statements are having such a profound affect on the 'special relationship' sending our colonial cousins into the arms of the Frogs French.
I have asked Parksy to pass on your address to my lawyer and I've instructed him to sue for hurt feelings

p.s. please note that I spelt bastardisation with a 's' and not a 'z'.

 

[colin(bridgend)]

Americans have not spoken English for years - a *** in America is a homosexual, a hood is the bonnet of a car, gas is petrol, etc. etc. There are also many words which have derived from Celtic origins prior to the invasion by the Saxons, Danes, etc. Devon and Cornwall was classed as South Wales, Cardiff/Swansea area was Mid Wales and then there was North Wales from Aberystwyth north. Many people say that the English language is a "bastardised" language with words and expressions being now commonly used in English originating from all parts of the globe. Also for your information I attended ballroom dance classes as a child and am very good at the old Scottish dance called the Gay Gordons. Jimmy Shand and his band had a very good LP of Scottish dance music and this dance was included on his record. God help any one of you who comes up with a personal insult regarding my dancing classes

 

[OmOnWeelz]

Well I'm certainly offended and such politically incorrect postings shouldn't be allowed in our diverse society. Also putting the blame on the Americans for the bastardisation of the English language is beyond comprehension. Is it any wonder that such statements are having such a profound affect on the 'special relationship' sending our colonial cousins into the arms of the Frogs French.
I have asked Parksy to pass on your address to my lawyer and I've instructed him to sue for hurt feelings

I'm truly SHOCKED that I've offended a member of English NOBility so much so that he has to use his briefs.
Get your briefs to send the writ to
SEA Weelz
A Caravan
Rest a while caravan pitch
C/O Under a Hunters Moon
Bodmin/Ex or Dart Moor

It should find me 1 day

 

[colin(bridgend)]

Chris - I would not worry at all about Lord B. - he has for years threatened me should I enter Hereford (he reckons that he has the right to kill a Welshman on a Sunday morning). I have been to Hereford many times on both business and pleasure without any ill effect. To qoute another well known English phrase - he is all mouth and wind. His bark is far worse than his bite. His chaimber maid brings him Horlicks at night as he is not even capable of making a hot night time drink.

 

[OmOnWeelz]

I was told the let the Welsh across the bridge to England FOC so there was plenty to shoot at

so may be he is correct.
I never thought of using Horlicks in my explanation earlier

Makes you wonder exactly what these peers get up to, does Lord B run his caravan from House of Lords expenses fiddle ??????????????????????????????????

 

[colin(bridgend)]

I think the opening cartoon feature for "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU" of a "down and out" peer sitting begging with a caption of two houses to support was modelled on Lord B. However I may be wrong