“Hard man”

This is an as near as I can tell exact British equivalent of U.S. “tough guy,” usually used in a sporting or criminal context. The quintessential hard man is footballer-turned-actor Vinnie Jones. The OED gives no definition or etymology, but the phrase appeared as early as 1984, in this capsule movie review in The Guradian.

“Sequel again features Gene Hackman as maverick, hard-man cop Popeye Doyle, back on the trail of his old drugs-czar adversary Fernando Rey.” (The Guardian, 1984)

Some other examples (taken from OED citations in other words’ definitions):

“There was no room to express love and only space for one kind of man: the hard man, the man’s man.” (Face, 1995)

“To his prison mates Archie was a swaggering hard man who never let a sliver of emotion through the tough exterior he had built against the world.” (Evening News [Edinburgh], 1998)

“Self-styled Hampstead hard man..is actually just a big-mouthed wet.” (Q, February 2003)

Historically, to the extent the the phrase could be found in the U.S., it was in phrases like “You’re a hard man to track down” or in the off-color Mae West chiasmus “A hard man is good to find.” I had assumed I would never encounter the tough-guy meaning here. But I assumed wrong. In a column about (American) footballer Jim Brown in yesterday’s New York Times, sports columnist George Vecsey wrote, “His aging high school teammates still shudder from the dreaded Tuesday tackling drills and know him as a hard man in public life.”

Figures it would be Vecsey, a soccer fan and a man of the world. I don’t expect to come across it again.

“Pulling”

The New York Times yesterday had an article about four UK television series (“Gavin & Stacey,” “Pulling,” “Second Sight,” and “Spy”) and one Australian one (“Rake”) that are being remade in the U.S. It interested me that ABC appears not to be giving a new title to “Pulling,” the original version of which the Times’ Mike Hale describes this way: “Featuring three unrepentantly randy women, it’s brutally frank about sex, booze and lowered expectations, while also being smart and raucously funny.”

The title thing intrigued me because I have never encountered that meaning of pull in the U.S. For the benefit of American readers, here’s the OED definition and citations:

I predict that if the show (which stars the excellent Kristen Schaal) ever makes it to air in the U.S., it will be with a new title.

Incidentally, Hale seems to have been inspired by his subject here to use not only randy but another NOOB, in this description of “Rake”: “The protagonist, now called Keegan Joye, will be played by one of American’s most gifted portrayers of kindhearted sleazeballs, Greg Kinnear.”

“Saviour” and “Nappies”

Now there’s a combination you don’t normally see, but they are, or at least seem to be, favorites of Amy Bishop, the American woman convicted of murdering three of her colleagues at the University of Alabama-Huntsville in 2010. Patrick Radden Keefe recently published a long article about her case in the New Yorker, and in it a line of dialogue spoken by a “pompous scientist” in one of Bishop’s unpublished novels:

“And you want to change nappies, wipe snotty noses, and shovel green glop into a baby’s mouth like any fat, stupid Hausfrau?”

If you are unfamiliar with the term and the context clues are insufficient, nappy is British for diaper. I don’t know if the pompous scientist is supposed to be British, but I can affirm that nappy has virtually never been used anywhere else in the U.S., even among the hipsters of deepest Williamsburg.

Elsewhere in the article, in discussing Bishop’s religious feelings, Keefe writes: “Amy told me she accepts Christ as her Saviour, and she has been reading the Bible in prison.”

The most common U.S. spelling is savior and has been since the 1930s. In the Google Ngram chart below, the green line is British use of saviour, red is U.S. saviour (note the NOOB uptick on the right), yellow is U.S. savior, and blue is British savior.

Despite the recent NOOB uptick in U.S. saviour, the u-less version is very much the standard here. The New York Times Style Guide mandates Savior in religious contexts, savior in secular ones (such as “the new goalie will be the savior of the hockey team”). The Associated Press Style Guide (followed by most U.S. newspapers) calls for lower-casing both. The New Yorker, true to its idiosyncratic self, calls for hockey saviors and a Christian Saviour. 

The nappy may be Amy Bishop’s; Saviour is very much the New Yorker’s.

“Gobshite”

Nancy Friedman asks, “Is Charles Pierce the only U.S. journalist who uses gobshite?” She provides a link to an Esquire Magazine politics blog post by Pierce, titled “What Are the Gobshites Saying These Days?”

I was not familiar with the term, but having previously covered gobsmacked (wherein gob means “mouth”) and shite, I could figure out that it means someone out of whose gob comes shite. The OED confirms the meaning and notes that it’s “chiefly Irish English” and (thanks!) “derogatory.” The first citation is from Hugh Leonard’s 1973 play “Da“: “Hey God, there’s an old gobshite at the tradesmen’s entrance.”

(Interestingly, the OED reports an earlier U.S. Navy use, meaning “enlisted seaman,” with this 1910 quote: “You can imagine all the feelin’s In a foolish ‘gobshite’s’ breast.”)

In answer to Nancy’s question, I would have to say, actually, yes. When I searched for the word in the Lexis-Nexis database of U.S. newspapers, going back to the 1980s, I was initially surprised to find fifty-six hits. But a few were references to or quotes from Ireland, and most of the rest were references to a New England-based band called The Gobshites. The most recent, from August 2012, was a quote from a”political observer” named Charlie Cooke. He was discussing, you guessed it, Charlie Pierce:

“Pierce’s hyperbole transcends mere disagreement, as does his dismissal of all those who dissent as ‘gobshites.’”

“Bugger”

From an NPR report this morning, about a Washington State man who confronted and then was shot by a gunman in a shopping mall:

“The first word that went through my head was ‘Bugger!’ Clearly, too much British TV.”

I categorize this one as an outlier because, as the gentleman’s comment indicates, the word has not penetrated (pardon the expression) U.S. usage yet, either as an interjection, a verb or an adverb (“And the pain, the hellish pain, of spending all that money, and getting bugger all in return,” The Sunday Times, 2002).

“Have (someone) on”

Faithful reader Wes Davis sends along a link to the outstanding American public radio show “This American Life.” He explained that the show’s staff “got a tip that hog rectums [known in the trade, collectively, as "bung"] were being sold as calamari and they set out to investigate the story.” Wes said that at roughly the 8:30 point in the segment, a NOOB erupted.

The reporter, Ben Calhoun, is talking to Ron Meek, an employee at a meat processing plant who confirms having been told that such a calamari bait-and-switch had indeed taken place. From the transcript available at the show’s website:

Ben Calhoun: And is there any possibility that you think that when they were explaining this to you, that they were kind of having you on a little bit?

Ron Meek: Having me on?

Ben Calhoun: Yeah, like–

Ron Meek: Bullshitting me?

Ben Calhoun: Yeah.

As Wes says, “It’s great because the exchange comes with a built-in reminder that American English already has a perfectly serviceable way of saying ‘having you on.’” (The OED has an 1867 first citation for the phrase and defines it as: “to puzzle or deceive intentionally; to chaff, tease; to hoax.”)

Indeed, AmE is especially rich in words denoting cheating and/or lying, which is one reason I am naming this one an Outlier. And Ben Calhoun doesn’t get any dispensation for using it by virtue of his heritage or education. Wikipedia says he was born in 1979 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and now lives in Brooklyn, New York–which is, of course, the most enthusiastic U.S. outpost of NOOBs.

Incidentally, later in the episode–which is very funny and highly recommended–Calhoun has an exchange with his sister Lauren, a chef, in which they each use a NOOB. They are staring at bung in a butcher case:

Ben: What do you think those bits are in there?

Lauren: Oh, you know. Poo.

“Car park”

A letter to the editor to my local weekly newspaper, The [Swarthmore, Pennsylvania] Swarthmorean, starts off this way:

Why is the college not using all the available space on the campus for a new car park?

If the present car park were expanded, it could accommodate many cars.

It was signed “Dorothy Moffett.”

I do not know if Ms. Moffett is British, but I suspect she is, because I have never  encountered an American who uses car park instead of one of our two alternatives, parking lot and parking garage.

But I found that the term at one time has some currency in the U.S.–at least among headline writers, who are always looking for ways to trim words and phrases. A 1953 New York Times headline reads “City Set to Start Metered Car Park.”

The only recent U.S.-datelined use in the Times came in a 2011 style-section piece about the Art Basel Miami Beach festival: “The event was originally scheduled to take place at a mansion on Indian Creek Island but ended up, more conveniently and also more appropriately, at the Herzog & de Meuron car park at 1111 Lincoln Road.”

1111 Lincoln Road

And in that case, parking garage is hardly sufficient. Here is how Wikipedia’s description of the seven-story, $65 million Miami Beach facility begins:

The design has been characterized as resembling a house of cards. It is an open-air structure with no exterior walls constructed around buttresses and cantilevers that features floor heights varying from 8 to 34 feet.Some of the internal ramps are quite steep in order to accommodate the wider height intervals. Elevators and a central, winding staircase take drivers to and from their cars.A glassed-in high-fashion boutique sits on an edge of the fifth floor.The parking garage features retail space at the street level, with tenants such as Maxposure Media Group, and is joined to another structure at the same address that serves as an office for SunTrust Banks.[Developer Robert] Wennett has built a penthouse apartment for himself as part of a 18,000-square-foot (1,700 m²) space on the structure’s roof that also features a pool and gardens with hanging vines.

Now that is a proper car park!

“Jack the Lad”

Among the several unfamiliar (to me) British expressions used in Justin Peters’ Slate piece (discussed below) was one used by Janet Maslin yesterday in her New York Times review of the memoirs of Rod Stewart, CBE:

“Mr. Stewart’s antics have earned him a richly deserved Jack the Lad reputation.”

In considering the expression, the OED suggests that the reader should “perhaps compare the expression Jack’s the Lad, found in a nautical song,” which it dates from the 1840s and from which it quotes this line: “For if ever fellow took delight in swigging, gigging, kissing, drinking, fighting, Damme I’ll be bold to say that Jack’s the lad.” The definition: “a conspicuously self-assured, carefree, and often brash young man; a ‘chancer’.”

Sounds about right for our Rodney Roderick (except for the “young” bit).

“Spanner in the works” (though not “spanner”)

Faithful reader Cameron directed me to a quotation from an article on MLB.com by Anthony Castrovince (the MLB standing for Major League Baseball):

“Wakefield was a dependable eater of innings who annoyed opponents — not just on the days he pitched, but the day after, for a knuckleballer serves as quite the spanner in the works.”

(Translation, for non-American readers: Tim Wakefield is a pitcher who specializes in a rather unusual, fluttering pitch called the knuckleball. Wakefield himself, while he doesn’t produce spectacular results, has the ability to get his team fairly deep in the game without giving up too many runs: that is, “eat innings.” It is a general truth that, if a team faces a knuckleballer one day, its batters don’t do very well against a conventional pitcher the next day.)

I categorize spanner, meaning wrench (the tool) as a Doobious NOOB–that is, it is never found here–and spanner in the works as an outlier. The OED finds the first use of the latter in P.G. Wodehouse’s 1934 Right Ho, Jeeves: “He should have had sense enough to see that he was throwing a spanner into the works.”

I believe the expression will never achieve wide circulation here–will be used only, as Mr. Castrovince does, as a self-conscious exoticism–because we have a synonymous and, arguably, more adaptable and expressive counterpart: throw a monkey wrench in or into, which can be followed by works, plans, operation, or anything else. The OED reports a use of this by the Chicago Tribune back in 1907: “It should look to them as if he were throwing a monkeywrench into the only market by visiting that Cincinnati circus upon the devoted heads of Kentucky’s best customers.”

When Cameron brought up spanner in the works, it rang a vague bell, originating, I realized, in the title of a 1995 Rod Stewart album. I’d never known what this meant, and so categorized it with similarly mystifying British record names, like “Tea for the Tillerman,” “John Barleycorn Is Dead,” and “Thick as a Brick.” When I mentioned the expression to my wife, she reminded me that John Lennon’s 1965 book was titled A Spaniard in the Works. I had never before gotten the play on words. Good one, John.

Oh, come on

In a profile of the director Robert Wilson in the September 17 issue of the New Yorker, Hilton Als relates how Wilson studied as an undergraduate at the University of Texas in his native state. Als then writes:

“While at university, where he enrolled in business administration to please his father, he took a job as a kitchen aide at the Austin State Hospital for the Mentally Handicapped.”

The “at university” sets a news standard for conspicuous and gratuitous use of Britishisms (CAGUOBs), even for the New Yorker.