Christopher,
Tough to get the message here with such words as:
distraint
deprival
suchlike
pluperfect
overfulfilled (fulfilled is as fulfilled as one can get)
Judy
hochmagandy
Falstaff
parallel lexis
sexual innuendo (is there any other kind of innuendo?)
Try to keep up with monosyllabic lexical units, or unisyllabificatory
referentials, at the very least.
Judy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Walker" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 11:06 AM
Subject: Re: untranslateable phrases
> <snip>
> And "I've been had"? [MW]
>
> OED has for HAVE v sense 15c:
>
> c. To get the better of, outwit, take in, deceive, 'do'. slang. [RH]
> <snip>
>
> It's part of a subset of POSSESSION conceived of as ADVANTAGE. Thus it can
> have (Othello I.ii; this is a wrestling expression also used in The
> Merchant) a physical sense of power: 'I'll have our Michael Cassio on the
> hip.' Nowadays one would have someone 'on the back foot'. Or a more
> general
> sense: 'You have the advantage of Me', 'You have me there' and so forth.
> Or
> a specifically sexual sense: 'Was ever woman in this humour won? / I'll
> have
> her; but I will not keep her long' (Rich III, 1.ii) where there's a
> parallel
> lexis of deprival: losing virginity, 'spending' and suchlike.
>
> Incidentally, the phrase 'have it off' can operate in two senses: either
> as
> distraint ('I'll have it off before I've done with you...': the 'it' here
> is
> rent money; Warren: *A Thousand a Year*, 1851) or as robbery (< 1931), or
> as
> hochmagandy (< 1930s; at least according to Partridge).
>
> Anyway here are two OED citations, both under 15a. They are very similar
> save that one turns on both wrestling with a sexual innuendo and the other
> (tricks ain't walking no more?) comes from cards:
>
> 'Why, she's neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her.'
> (Falstaff in Henry IV Part I)
>
> 'One had better sometimes play with a good gamester than a bungler, for
> one
> knowes not where to have him' (*Shuffling, Cutting and Dealing*, 1659)
>
> <snip>
> I've bought the farm [MW]
> <snip>
>
> This is an extension of that principle, I suspect: SPENDING (money,
> energy,
> blood, life etc) conceived of as a LOSS. So, as Judy went on to suggest,
> the
> 'farm' is decorative rather than intrinsic. In losing his life, 'he bought
> it' > 'he bought the plot' > 'he bought the farm'. (In the UK 'gone for a
> Burton' has a similar folk explanation, from either suits or beer,
> depending
> on who is telling it; but the operative word is 'gone'. 'Gone West' is
> another such.)
>
> <snip>
> I've had it (je l'ai tenue?), in both its meanings [MW]
> <snip>
>
> This is more complex, I think, but again it turns on possession. In the
> sense of irritation, the pluperfect signals possession overfulfilled: 'I
> just can't take any more', 'I've had it (up to here)', 'I'm fed up (to the
> back teeth)' and so forth. But of course to 'have had it' in a more darkly
> pluperfect sense refers to that threshold moment, just before the point of
> death, by which time all available *possession* has already passed through
> one's hands and all life is (effectively) 'spent'.
>
> CW
> _______________________________________________
>
> 'How to speak a different language and still be understood?
> This is *communication* but we might call it politics, or we
> might call it life.' (Judith Revel)
>
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