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I loved the Biffy discussion. Though I think the usage has spread beyond what you mentioned, Grant. Growing up in Southern California I would run into this word every now and then. I wouldn't say it was the most popular word for what is usually called a PortaPotty, but I think it's generally understood.
- G
martha said:
Paradox: Ick! Sounds like a variation on “no room to swing a cat,” eh?
Martha:
I find a few references on the web that suggest that "swinging a dead cat" arose as a variation of "swinging a cat" (which actually refers to a cat-o-nine-tails) but nothing that looks definate or well documented.
On the other hand, one (that being the dead variety) is used to express that
something is very common while the other (which one may just as well assume is "un-dead"?) expresses that space is very tight.
Some sites suggest that the "dead" version grew out of a series of jokes about dead cats that were popular in the 1970's. This would be, as it were, a lone surviving dead cat! Seems to me though, having gone through my teens in the 70's, that dead baby jokes were the rage, not dead cats. Perhaps I just missed out. 🙂
Grant Barrett said:
I should have mentioned during the show that my pronunciation of “gedunk” as something like “guh-DUNK” is not the one used most often, especially in the Navy, where it is usually “GEE-dunk.”
Having served in the navy from 1962-66, I recall that geedunk was the first odd word we learned at boot camp. “Here is your barracks. Here is your bunk. Here is the head and across the street you'll find the geedunk.” It was always pronounced “gee-dunk” and was almost always spelled that way, too. Dropping the second e seemed to me to give the word an inappropriate German feeling.
I thought that “Geedunk Sunday” was a term to describe a Sunday (or any day on which you had no duties) where you could be so lazy as to not take your regular meals at the mess hall or galley, instead seeking sustenance at the soda fountain.
I appreciate your explanation of its origins, as I always thought it was Chinese, like “cumshaw”, a word used in the navy to describe illicit bartering as a non-regulation method of appropriation.
My apologies if this has been noted elsewhere on the forum, but Wisconsin Public Radio's show Here on Earth recently featured Elizabeth Little, author of the book Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic
http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archive_080312k.cfm
You can get a free MP3 of the archived program here:
http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archives.cfm
The show is also available as a podcast:
http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/podcast.cfm
Enjoy!
The rumored nonsensical translation for "Coca-Cola" is "????":
"?" means "tadpole," and repeating a word for an animal twice is typical kiddy talk, so that makes "??" more like "taddypole";
"?" is "to bite"; and "?" is "wax."
So it's actually the tadpole who bites the wax, not the drinker.
Still nonsensical, but it's at least a more accurate translation. 🙂
The Chinese Wikipedia (far less credible than the English Wikipedia) entry for "Cola-Cola" still maintains that the initial official translation of the brand name is "Taddypole Bites Wax," which also seems to be a popular Chinese urban myth, but I doubt if that ever really occurred. Years (probably decades) before Cola Cola entered the Mainland Chinese market, it already set up official distributions in other Chinese language markets, such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, and had had uniform brand name translation for years, same as the one currently in use. It's a very pleasant name, which I understand to mean "delicious and makes you happy"; the "makes you happy" part comes from the phono-based translation of "cola" and has become the Chinese word (I believe it's universal in all Chinese language communities) for "coke" (the beverage only). The success with the name also dictated how Pepsi translated its own, which could be loosely translated as "Everything Would Be a Happy Thing."
Aside from disbelieving any company would give up on a perfectly fine and already culturally powerful name to create another, I also doubt if a company as well structured and image-conscious as Coca Cola would allow any regional distributor to get creative with any part of the product image (and the brand name no less), and I just can't find any picture of any actual Coca Cola artifact bearing that name, so my take is better take it as a joke. 🙂
FWIW, Coca-Cola in Mandarin is ???? which could be translated as “Tasty and able to be happy”. Mind you, this is in simplified Chinese, so the characters are a little different. But the main thing is that it can mean something even though it is a phonetic rendering of a word from an unrelated language.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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