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Date: 23/12/22
Very Big Nuts
Just a couple of curiosities to leave you with before we hunker down for the Feast of St. Jeremy and All Hunts, chums.
Firstly, a linguistic oddity. I've written before about how families seem to have certain words or phrases which are unique to them. Well, here's another example from my own family which I've just remembered.
The phrase this time is 'very big'. Not used here in its standard sense to describe the dimensions of something, however. The phrase was used - exclusively by my mother, now I think about it - as an expression of failed intent; that is, to intend to do something, but in the end not to have done it. Examples:
"I was going to go to town this morning, very big, but the insurance man called."
or
"I was going to wash those curtains and put them out on the line, very big, but it started raining."
I have never heard the phrase used in that way by anyone else, ever.
The only remotely plausible explanation I can think of for the usage is that my mother's father was fluent in Cymraeg and although - as was all too common in the first half of the last century - he never passed the language itself down to his children, he may have used the phrase as a translation of the phrase 'yn fawr iawn'. The only grit in the Vaseline of my theory is that I have never heard that phrase used in that way in Cymraeg either. Perhaps had I been a native speaker of it, I would have done at some point, but I don't remember having encountered it at all.
I was going to do some further research, very big, but it's nearly tea-time so I can't be bothered.
Oddity number two comes from a headline in the Guaraniad today:
Presumably they give only cold baths to men who don't have them. After all, they would have - literally - nothing to lose.
Season of the condiments to you all.
