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Countries RSS Feeds773-1: Feedback, notes and comments - Standing pie Several readers noted that stand pie is known in northern England. Nick Munton wrote: “The term is still in use here in Leeds, although perhaps less so now. A stand pie is a large pork pie, one that would be shared between a number of people. ‘Order your Stand Pie for Christmas’ certainly used to be a common sign in butchers’ windows before Christmas when I came to live in Leeds in the late 70s.” Mike Sykes pointed me to an article in the Yorkshire Post dated June 2007: “[Pork] pies were a childhood treat – the bigger version, the stand pie, was an essential part of Christmas, complete with home-made piccalilli”, saying also that another local name for a pork pie was growler. Stand pie is almost certainly a shortened form of standing pie, as recipes exist under that name which describe making the same kind of hard-baked pastry cases. However, modern recipes ...Feed Source: www.worldwidewords.org 773-2: Weird Words: Halt -
Halt in the expression the halt and the lame is a different word to the one meaning to stop and has long been obsolete except in this one usage (the Oxford English Dictionary described it as archaic a century ago and it has become even more obscure since).
If asked, I’d guess most people would plump for a biblical origin for the expression. It turns out not to be so. The individual words halt and lame certainly figure in the King James version of 1611, but nowhere together. This is one appearance of halt:
It is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.[Matthew 18:8.]
The word is a Germanic one that Old English spelled as halt or healt; it’s from the verb healtian, which meant to walk with a limp. A writer in 1868 who noted that “He halted slightly in his walk&rdqu... 773-3: Turns of Phrase: Human safari -
In human safaris, parties of tourists are taken to isolated tribal communities for intrusive and sometimes salacious entertainment. The practice is far from new but the term has become widely known this year as a result of an investigation by Gethin Chamberlain for The Observer, a British Sunday newspaper.
The communities concerned are on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, particularly the Jarawa on the Andaman Islands. The tribe has long resisted external interference, but the building of a major road has opened up their tribal lands to outsiders to devastating effect. Though the Indian government prohibits any contact with the Jawara, including feeding or photographing them, the ban has been ignored and they have been exploited. The appeal for some tourists is their habit of going naked.
Though human safari has been known as a nonce formation for some years (in 2003 The Scotsman described a human safari through Bel Air a... 773-4: Questions and Answers: Putter or potter -
[Q] From Leslie Stephens in France: Watching the movie of Carousel recently, we heard (during the song about the clam-bake) that “We weren’t in a mood to putter”. Was this word merely concocted to rhyme with butter or is it a recognised US expression?
[A] It is a well-known North American expression. It’s also common in other parts of the English-speaking world, though people outside North America prefer to spell it potter. It has no connection with butter, unless you choose to interpret that word to mean “one who butts”, as with the head.
The earliest meaning of potter (I’ll stick to that spelling) was the action of poking or prodding something repeatedly.
I have been pottering about with my stick, and my family have all been on their knees grubbing i’ the ashes.[Family Secrets by S J Pratt, 1797.]
It appears in the seventeenth ce... 773-5: Sic! -
• On 7 February Robyn Ramm found a report on the iHeartRadio website about a fire: “Eight people were all sleeping inside when unattended food on the kitchen stove spread to the cabinets and then the attic.”
• My area, in common with much of Britain, has had some cold weather recently. John Gray tells us The Gloucestershire Citizen reported on 5 February, “In Bourton On the Water, Cheltenham, Bream, Winchcombe and Tetbury firefighters were called out after the chilli conditions saw water pipes burst and tanks ruptured.”
• Russell Erwin e-mailed from New South Wales. He had found an advert in the Town & Country Magazine of 30 January announcing an auction sale. The reason for the sale was given as “Due to disillusion of Partnership”.
... 773-6: Copyright and contact details -
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