through US films and television programmes, has resulted in both forms becoming used in British English. A Brit who would never say
arse
in polite conversation might well use the intensifying
I was working my ass off
or talk about someone as being a
smart-ass
. And the unusual expression
ass-backward(s)
, meaning ‘completely wrong, back-to-front’, has achieved a wider presence too, especially after Thomas Pynchon played around with it in
Gravity’s Rainbow
(1974). What’s unusual about it,as one of his characters says, is that the ass already faces backwards, so if the expression means ‘wrong way round’ it should really be
ass-forwards
. But what seems to be happening here is the development of a new, intensifying usage, meaning ‘very’, heard also in some other slang phrases, such as
ass o’clock
(as in
I gotta get up at ass o’clock tomorrow
, i.e. ‘very very early’).
We have to be especially careful when it comes to the adjective
arsy
. In Britain, the word means ‘bad-tempered’ or ‘arrogant’, as in
We get the occasional arsy customer in here
. In Australia, the word has developed a positive meaning, ‘lucky’:
That was an arsy goal
. It’s wise to pay special attention to who’s speaking before deciding what to make of
You’re an arsy bastard!
Swain
a poetic expression (12th century)
It’s strange how some words end up only in poetry. Sometimes the reason is to do with the need to keep a particular rhythm in a line – so, if you’re looking for a word with a single beat, you can turn
over
into
o’er
,
ever
into
e’er
and
often
into
oft
. But with such words as
lea
( §2 ),
dewy
,
dusky
and
darksome
, which would be highly unlikely to be heard in everyday speech, it’s not at all clear why poets fell in love with them. The story of
swain
, meaning ‘lover’ or ‘sweetheart’, is one of the strangest, for there’s nothing in its origins tosuggest that one day it would become a poet’s word. On the contrary. In Old English, a
swan
(pronounced ‘swahn’) looked after pigs (
swine
).
The word began its journey towards a more refined life in the early Middle Ages. Any young man who held a low social position could be called a
swain
– but, as today, some low positions were higher than others. In particular, the word was used for one of the servants of a knight – the lowest level, below a squire and a groom, but still a desirable career for a young lad. Gradually,
swain
came to be applied to any man who was an attendant or follower, and then it broadened in meaning. When Chaucer describes Sir Thopas as a
doughty swayn
, he means simply ‘valiant man’, and when in one of the York Mystery plays Jesus is described as a
litill swayne
, the writer means only ‘little boy’.
But then another association developed, with shepherds and farm labourers, and this is the one that appealed greatly to poets. In Spenser’s
Fairy Queen
(Book III, Canto VI, Stanza 15) we can see the romantic countryside associations beginning to build up: ‘the gentle shepherd swains, which sat / Keeping their fleecy flocks’. By the end of the 16th century, a
swain
had become a country wooer. There was even a short-lived derived form,
swainling
, which was sometimes also used for women.
Poetic diction is an important element in the history of vocabulary, but it isn’t as popular now as it once was. Today the language of the streetsprovides most of the lexicon of poetry. We won’t find many modern poets using such words as
swain
. But Modern English does retain a couple of echoes of the early ‘dogsbody’ meaning of the word, in an unexpected place – the world of boats. The original pronunciation has been lost, but the old word is there in the spelling of
boatswain
and
coxswain
.
Pork
an elegant word (13th century)
Why does
foie gras
sound so much more palatable than
goose liver
, or
boeuf bourguignon
more romantic than
beef stew
? The tradition of preferring French words to English ones in
arse
in polite conversation might well use the intensifying
I was working my ass off
or talk about someone as being a
smart-ass
. And the unusual expression
ass-backward(s)
, meaning ‘completely wrong, back-to-front’, has achieved a wider presence too, especially after Thomas Pynchon played around with it in
Gravity’s Rainbow
(1974). What’s unusual about it,as one of his characters says, is that the ass already faces backwards, so if the expression means ‘wrong way round’ it should really be
ass-forwards
. But what seems to be happening here is the development of a new, intensifying usage, meaning ‘very’, heard also in some other slang phrases, such as
ass o’clock
(as in
I gotta get up at ass o’clock tomorrow
, i.e. ‘very very early’).
We have to be especially careful when it comes to the adjective
arsy
. In Britain, the word means ‘bad-tempered’ or ‘arrogant’, as in
We get the occasional arsy customer in here
. In Australia, the word has developed a positive meaning, ‘lucky’:
That was an arsy goal
. It’s wise to pay special attention to who’s speaking before deciding what to make of
You’re an arsy bastard!
Swain
a poetic expression (12th century)
It’s strange how some words end up only in poetry. Sometimes the reason is to do with the need to keep a particular rhythm in a line – so, if you’re looking for a word with a single beat, you can turn
over
into
o’er
,
ever
into
e’er
and
often
into
oft
. But with such words as
lea
( §2 ),
dewy
,
dusky
and
darksome
, which would be highly unlikely to be heard in everyday speech, it’s not at all clear why poets fell in love with them. The story of
swain
, meaning ‘lover’ or ‘sweetheart’, is one of the strangest, for there’s nothing in its origins tosuggest that one day it would become a poet’s word. On the contrary. In Old English, a
swan
(pronounced ‘swahn’) looked after pigs (
swine
).
The word began its journey towards a more refined life in the early Middle Ages. Any young man who held a low social position could be called a
swain
– but, as today, some low positions were higher than others. In particular, the word was used for one of the servants of a knight – the lowest level, below a squire and a groom, but still a desirable career for a young lad. Gradually,
swain
came to be applied to any man who was an attendant or follower, and then it broadened in meaning. When Chaucer describes Sir Thopas as a
doughty swayn
, he means simply ‘valiant man’, and when in one of the York Mystery plays Jesus is described as a
litill swayne
, the writer means only ‘little boy’.
But then another association developed, with shepherds and farm labourers, and this is the one that appealed greatly to poets. In Spenser’s
Fairy Queen
(Book III, Canto VI, Stanza 15) we can see the romantic countryside associations beginning to build up: ‘the gentle shepherd swains, which sat / Keeping their fleecy flocks’. By the end of the 16th century, a
swain
had become a country wooer. There was even a short-lived derived form,
swainling
, which was sometimes also used for women.
Poetic diction is an important element in the history of vocabulary, but it isn’t as popular now as it once was. Today the language of the streetsprovides most of the lexicon of poetry. We won’t find many modern poets using such words as
swain
. But Modern English does retain a couple of echoes of the early ‘dogsbody’ meaning of the word, in an unexpected place – the world of boats. The original pronunciation has been lost, but the old word is there in the spelling of
boatswain
and
coxswain
.
Pork
an elegant word (13th century)
Why does
foie gras
sound so much more palatable than
goose liver
, or
boeuf bourguignon
more romantic than
beef stew
? The tradition of preferring French words to English ones in
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