Frog's Knickers

[nineweaving]

Glorious essay-review on the history of swearing by the witty and learned Colin Burrow, Fellow of All Souls, none of it quotable on LJ except for his title, which I've borrowed.  That was his mother's (the late incomparable DWJ's) "favoured way of flirting with the ‘f’ word

Comments

[sartorias]

Turdidulous! Fuckadoodledoo!

[nineweaving]

Too bloody right!

Nine

[nightspore]

I always use as my example of iambic pentameter as passionate utterance a line from Total Recall (1990). Sharon Stone is smacking an immobilized Arnold Schwarzenegger really hard, on the stresses, as she complains that she's had to chase him to Mars, that unpleasant outpost. "You know how much I hate this [frogging] planet," she spits. Feminine ending. It's the one thing students remember from my classes.

[nineweaving]

Indelible!

Nine

[nineweaving]

Indeed they are!

The OED lists both meanings of runnion (the hag) and runnion (the upstander) under one heading, but makes no attempt to connect them.

Shakespeare comes first for the term of abuse (though it could have been spoken slang for heaven knows how long): "Aroynt thee, Witch, the rumpe-fed Ronyon cryes."

T'other is Restoration, though Seint Ronyon goes way back to Chaucer. The form of veneration accorded to the saint is quite clear in Thomas Nashe's notorious Choise of Valentines (1601), which is all about dildoes: "For, by Saint Runnion he'le refresh me well, And neuer make my tender bellie swell."

Nine