… in the U.S. media, my friend Andrew Feinberg points out, as witness this use of the word in today’s Wall Street Journal:
Abbreviations
OED=Oxford English Dictionary AmE=American English BrE=British EnglishBen Yagoda's Books
- "About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made"
- "How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems and the Best Ways to Avoid Them"
- "Memoir: A History"
- "The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism"
- "The B-Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song"
- "The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing"
- "When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse"
- "Will Rogers: A Biography"
- "You Need to Read This: The Death of the Imperative Mode, the Rise of the American Glottal Stop, the Bizarre Popularity of "Amongst," and Other Cuckoo Things That Have Happened to the English Language"
Other Cool Books
Blogroll
Yagodiana
Search
Top Posts & Pages
Archives
Top Clicks
Blog Stats
- 1,947,762 hits
Category Cloud
Tweets
- RT @kconnormartin: A funny thing about the @OED entry for '420' is that it has to explain for DD/MM-using non-Americans why on earth that s… 2 hours ago
- Hey all you people who blame Americans for polluting British English with its their neologisms, backformations and… twitter.com/i/web/status/9… 11 hours ago
- RT @phillyliarsclub: This week on the #Oddcast, author, educator, blogger & writing expert @byagoda talks with @JonMcGoran @gregory_frost @… 13 hours ago
- Happy birthday to my favorite book, @OED! twitter.com/bgzimmer/statu… 1 day ago
- "Whoever that poor sod is, I wish him or her good luck.”—James Marcus, on the next editor of Harper’s. #lookintosod… twitter.com/i/web/status/9… 1 day ago
Wonderful.
Next week Arthur Daley moves to New York.
No problem! In Canada we know “dodgy” as a word used to describe actions of our government. For an example of dodgy behaviour try Julian Fantino.
And in reading of Mr. Fantino’s troubles on the CBC website, I came across the following: “Auditor general Michael Ferguson tore a strip off the government for making soldiers with post-traumatic stress wait up to eight months to find out if they’re eligible for treatment.” Thanks, gilda – I’ve lived near Canada all my life, but that’s my first encounter with that vivid expression.
I saw a TV interview of US military commanders during the 2nd Gulf war. They were asked whether they had a any difficulty with Brit slang ( possibly a reference to “sticky” in the Korean War which was misunderstood by a US commander who didn’t appreciate the understatement..it is said!….and so no support was sent to a British battalion which was almost eliminated.)
One of the Americans said No.. Then corrected himself and said there was a new word though which he really liked!…”Dodgy”
On that basis alone and not even bothering to look further I would say this has to be a NOOB
There was/is a Britpop band called Dodgy, but they don’t seem to have troubled the US market much.
Their biggest hit had the chorus:
‘If it’s good enough for you,
It’s good enough for me.’
Which is a good definition of a NOOB.
It’s a Dodgy connection! 🙂 (I’ll get my coat…)