The Wide, Wide World Of Slang

[snacktastic]

I also use 'deadly' for brilliant/wicked all the time. It can get quite confusing when I speak to a non-Irish person and say that I think that i.e. a band/dress/film/song etc is 'deadly' and they have no idea what I'm on about!

Especially since, at least to me in Boston and in most parts of the US (I think, but I don't know what to think anymore with this thread), saying band or a film is deadly means it's so boring, that it could kill ya!

[Deleted]

So Dexie's Midnight Runners are Dexies Midnight Tennis Shoes? Come on Eileen...

[foxyepicurean]

Finally, a chance to have an honest-to-goodness Antipodean answer this burning question:

In the US, the noun "fanny" is a old-fangled and innocuous synonym for "butt." My saintly grandmother would use the term to tell me I'd gotten dust on my posterior.

HOWEVER, I've heard that "fanny" is an incredibly crass and offensive synonym for the c-word in Australia, and perhaps NZ. Is this true? Was great-aunt Frances' nickname doubling as a rude term for women's genitalia? (It was bad enough with the butt jokes!)

I'd like to believe that this meaning is just an urban legend...please clarify!

[colette]

I don't know about Australia and NZ, but in England fanny means the female bits. As far as I know it's not nearly as offensive as the c word is in the States though.

The Brits I know practically die laughing every time they hear a Yank refer to their fanny packs.

[spider]

Not an urban legend and not just in Oz but in the UK and other English speaking areas of Europe. The term "fanny pack" never fails to amuse.

[foxyepicurean]

Thanks, Collette and Spider!

Glad to know that it's evidently not as offensive as I'd been led to believe. Also glad that it wasn't completely false--since my preacher was the one who told us the alternate meaning (wouldn't want to discover he was a big fibber). And, no, my preacher wasn't inappropriately discussing female bits with his congregants! His friend, another preacher, had used the phrase "find your fanny" while guest-speaking in Australia... The sweet old lady he was staying with had a devil of a time trying to explain why no one wanted to congratulate him on what he thought was a lovely, moving sermon! He thought you Aussies were a cold, rude bunch till he learned his mistake.

[pepper67]

Long before I found out about fanny packs, I was watching an American soap where one of the guys exhorted everyone to 'get off their fannies' in order to help.

My teenaged mind was blown by the fact that Americans could say that on TV!

[kindred]

Yep, 'fanny' = girl bits in NZ as well. And not as offensive as the c word there either.

[LurkerNan]

This reminds me of this:

Back when my husband and I decided to get married, we wanted an Anglican minister, because we're non-denominational and my husband's sister is an Anglican nun. But in SoCal we didn't know any Anglican ministers, so we picked one out of the phone book and went to his house to visit with him so he could council us on whether we were ready to marry. (We had been living together for 6 years by then, but whatever...)

So we were talking all politely with this man we just met and somehow the conversation turned to slang, and he blurts out "You know what they call a female private area in the US, don't you? A PUSSY!" And he roared with laughter, I thought he was going to fall out of the chair.

I don't think he realized that referring to female private parts as kitty-kats is not something anyone would do in polite company. It's too dirty for TV. But here was this British minister that we just met having a big ol' guffaw about blue language while we were determined to be on our best behavior, seeing as how this man was going to marry us. And he did, you know.

[tinyshoes]

Duke said:

So Dexie's Midnight Runners are Dexies Midnight Tennis Shoes? Come on Eileen...

This might be off-topic, but didn't the band name themselves after amphetimine slang?