I got to bed late last night
after going out to dinner with TL
(that's a new name for a previously posted person
but circumstances have changed so their previous name
is no longer appropriate.)
Great dinner, great conversation, awesome connecting again.
Weird to dine in a restaurant surrounded by collapsed buildings
but that's the new normal round here.
Anyway I am assuming* that CERA
will take it's sweet time to sort our city out
so dinners amongst ruins will be the usual
I think I'll pretend it's Rome.
So I got bed after getting home
and watching the tail end of battle for something
which was being screened on our new local movie theatre,
my lounge wall.
I brought home the work projector for some reason
and now things like Graham Norton have been on my wall like
a piece of art that hasn't quite receached it's potential.
Battling aliens for Los Angeles is a big concept to get your head around
when your lounge is not that big.
So I finally got to bed
(a bit like this post)
and lay there thinking how silly the word
disappointed is.
See usually a prefix of dis- would mean the negative
but apppointed means an entirely different thing.
Which leads me to a conversation I over heard on the radio
one morning this week which was followed up by a dinner conversation on Tuesday night.
On the radio they, being Si and Gary,
were discussing the word munted.
It's current and usage is to describe the degree of a buildings destruction from various earthquakes.
So one might say "My house got munted in the February earthquake but June 13th totally munted it."
and you would know that in Feb they probably had a number of cracks and a hot water tank that released it's contents through the roof and flooded the house but it was still habitable.
In June, they would have, maybe come off their piles, lost a wall, had liquefaction again
but basically had their house red stickered due to structural damage.
Keep in mind these days red stickered doesn't necessarily mean you don't keep living in your house,
it just means someone decided it was unsafe,
but it's all good otherwise.
So Gary decided to investigate where the word munted came from.
Keep in mind for NZ this is the original Munter
So Gary's findings were that the word Munted
comes from the word munt which is a British colonialist
word for natives in Rhodesia
(used Rhodesia instead of Zimbabwe cause that was when it was a racist state,
y'know as apposed to now that it's a Marxist state with absolutely no racism at all, ever.)
Based on the location of it's use it can be assumed to have been a negative word for natives.
But it also means;
extremely drunk,
extremely ugly,
and extremely broken.
Now Gary, who is a bit of a confused Marxist,
has decided to never use THAT word again.
More power to him.
His decision was based on the root of the word or original common use
and to ignore the evolution of the word to mean something different and is of common usage.
Now there are other words that have evolved from being a complimentary word used in poetry
to what is basically the worst, most insulting word in the world....
in my humble opinion.
Sorry had to find of a way of being clear
and how better than to use a picture of a Bush.
That's cracking me up....
So I emailed the radio station if Gary, based on his logic
would start using this original old Elizabethan English word
to compliment his wife?
Hmmmmmm......
Can't be a sanctimonious hypocrite in a public forum now can we?
*Thinking about words I'm kind of annoyed that assume has got a bad rap. Every time I use it a little voice in my head that sounds like my 5th form English teacher, says "assume makes an ASS out of U and ME" emphasis hers. That bothers me cause assume is a great word and it only is ass making if supporting information isn't collected, which any intelligent person would do before making an educated guess aka an assumption. To be fair it was the public school system and catering to the lowest common denominator.
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