Thursday, June 22, 2006

"... hot enough to boil a monkey's bum"

"Third Bruce: Blimey, it's hot in here, Bruce.

First Bruce: Hot enough to boil a monkey's bum!

Second Bruce: That's a strange expression, Bruce.

First Bruce: Well Bruce, I heard the Prime Minister use it. "It's hot enough to boil a monkey's bum in here, your Majesty," he said, and she smiled quietly to herself.

Third Bruce: She's a good Sheila, Bruce, and not at all stuck up."

My hat is duly doffed to the chaps of Monty Python ...

to doff. A verb that doesn't get enough of an airing these days I feel. Since those halcyon days of hat wearing, when doffing was the bane of a persons life, the verb has seemingly sidled into an anonymous siding, like the fat bloke on the team who's forever shouting out his team-mates names in the hope of getting the ball, only to be passed it in a prime goal scoring position and then shy maniacally at it only to see it miss by a margin that was more than was humanly possible to imagine given his proximity to the goal line.

Not really I know, but still, we'll let the analogy pass.

Write to your local ombudsman; petition your MP ... "Doff, because your worth it."

A thought for a Thursday post-meridien: if you can doff your hat, and by association your clothes, does that mean that dedoffing is putting them on in the first place? "I dedoffed this morning but managed to put my pants on back to front.", "I had to dedoff in the dark which is why I'm wearing odd socks."

4 comments:

  1. So you're saying that predoff the doffer would redoff and then proceed to the doff, right?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Something along those lines, yes. That said, it did occur to me, in a fit of mid-flight ingeniousness (does the word exist? Who cares, it does now.) that to don, is in fact the opposite of to doff. Makes sense, albeit in a vaguely contrived and convoluted way ... but then that's what english etymology does best ...

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is all going to get mighty confusing if the chap's called Don. Or Doff for that matter.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your comment. Thank you for your patience while we moderate.