OK, so let’s have another word. I’ve just finished reading Filthy English: The How, Why, When and What of Everyday Swearing by Peter Silverton. Yes, it’s interesting but not deep and quite light-hearted — as one might expect. One thing he said which I didn’t know (or had long forgotten) is the origins of the word goolies. So today we bring you…

Goolies, or as the OED would have it gooly (in the singular).

Yes, in standard English it normally appears in the plural and means the testicles.

According to the OED, which hedges its bets slightly, it is “apparently of Indian origin”, like from the Hindustani golí, a bullet, ball, pill. Curiously the first referenced citation is only in 1937 — I would have expected it to be around 100 years earlier. It was certainly a word I learnt quite early in my school days, so it must have been in regular North London usage by the end of the 1950s.

Usefully(?) gooly also means a stone or pebble in Australian slang. (Well again, so the OED says.)

What is also interesting is that the OED doesn’t know the origin of the cricketing term googly (a ball which spins from leg to off when bowled by a right-arm bowler to a right-handed batsman) and which one might expect to be related to gooly. So who knows?

Anyway there’s another Indian word you know, to go along with pyjamas and bungalow.

Mehari

An Arabian, single-humped camel, used for riding and racing. A racing dromedary.

Also a French risk analysis methodology. See Wikipedia

Yaffle

1. (n) The green woodpecker or it’s call. (Onomatopoeic from its call.)

hence …

2. (n & v) The call of the green woodpecker

and also ..

3. (n & v) A bark, a yelp.
4. (n) (Newfoundland dialect) A handful; an armful, esp. of dried fish or kindling.

hence …

5. (v) To gather up (a load of fish, etc.) in one’s arms.
6. (v) To eat or drink, esp. noisily or greedily.

Who remembers Bagpuss and Prof. Yaffle?

Dzo (or dso, dzho, zho, zo)

A Tibetan hybrid of yak (Bos grunniens) and domestic cattle (a domesticated form of aurochs, Bos primigenius). The word dzo technically refers to a male hybrid, while a female is known as a dzomo or zhom.

See also Wikipedia.

Comminuted

1. Reduced to minute particles.
2. (Surgical). Of a bone: broken or crushed into several pieces. Hence a “comminuted fracture”.
3. Smashed up, as in “comminuted orange” (used to make fruit juice) which is often just whole oranges smashed to a pulp.

Yesterday seems to have been quite a good day for oxymorons. We had:

• Selective comprehensive schools (courtesy of BBC TV)
• Lincolnshire Scotch Eggs (courtesy of M&S)
• Flat-rate pension (that is only flat rate if it applies to you; courtesy the government)

Chota Peg

According to the Online Encyclopaedia:
“A miniature jug used for individual servings of alcohol, dating from British colonial India at the end of the 19th century. Chota is the Hindi word for ‘small measure’.”

Samosapedia, “the definitive guide to South Asian lingo”, gives it slightly differently:
“A standard pitcher/tankard was marked by wooden nails called pegs or pins in 17th/18th century Great Britain and a ‘peg’ usually marked an individual quantity of drink. This measure was later adopted to make individual whiskey/brandy containers during the Raj that measured about 2 ounces (about 60ml). A Chota Peg was half the size, about an ounce or 30ml.”

Hence by derivation chota peg became British Army slang for an alcoholic drink, especially whiskey or brandy and soda, or gin and tonic.

Peavey

Well, neither the OED:

A lumberer’s cant-hook having a spike at the end of the lever.

nor the more US-centric Free Dictionary:

An implement consisting of a wooden shaft with a metal point and a hinged hook near the end, used to handle logs

actually help us a lot here.

Fortunately Wikipedia is more forthcoming:

A peavey or peavey hook is a logging tool consisting of a handle, generally from 30 to 50 inches long … with a metal spike protruding from the end. The spike is rammed into a log, then a hook (at the end of an arm attached to a pivot a short distance up the handle) grabs the log at a second location. Once engaged, the handle gives the operator leverage to roll or slide or float the log to a new position.

The peavey was named for blacksmith Joseph Peavey of Upper Stillwater, Maine, who invented the tool as a refinement to the cant hook …

And just so’s you know a cant hook is a peavey with a blunt end.

Haruspication

A form of divination from lightning and other natural phenomena, but especially from inspection of the entrails of animal sacrifices

An Etruscan model of a sheep’s liver used for divination

Wallah or Walla

From the Hindi/Urdu suffix -wālā, which has the sense of ‘pertaining to or connected with’ that preceding, which may be compared with the English suffix -er (as in, for example, baker, walker). Thanks to the Raj, in English it has progressed beyond its Indian roots and has come to mean:

1. One employed in a particular occupation or activity (eg. kitchen wallah; rickshaw wallah).
2. An important person in a particular field or organization.
3. One carrying out a routine administrative job; a civil servant, a bureaucrat.

Thus it is also a component of Indian names, eg. Unwalla (originally a wool worker or merchant).

Other examples of Anglo-Indian usage include:

• banghy-wallah, a porter who carries loads with a banghy or shoulder-yoke
• dhobi-wallah, a laundry worker (photo right)
• punkah-wallah, a servant who works a fan
• Dillī-wālā, inhabitant of Delhi.