Re: 'Niss' or 'Nis'

On May 29, 5:31 pm, "John Briggs" <john.brig...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Blue Sow wrote:
I encountered this word while watching a late sixties tv drama.

It was used in the sense of calling someone a bad name as in 'you
niss!'.
The only word like that I can find refers to Swedish goblins of a
friendly nature (or similar) which would not seem to fit.

Is this a pre-existing word or simply one coined for the programme to
avoid using a 'real' swear-word? (I was reminded of some silly
science fiction programme that allegedly used such words to avoid the
use of f... etc.)

Yes, it's most likely a nonce-word used instead of some other word that
might have been judged unacceptable. In his novel "Myron" (a sequel to
"Myra Breckinridge") Gore Vidal replaced rude words by the names of Supreme
Court Justices - I think you can probably imagine what an enormous rehnquist
is :-)
--
John Briggs

Yes, I was wondering on reading this thread
whether it may not be more akin to an Unwin
than anything a Reading guttersnipe'd know.

Spelled backwards it would be "sin", which,
at that time could easily refer to both the
original sin of Eve and also the sin of the
sodomite--i.e. not just a *** but a gay
one at that.

As such, I wouldn't rule-out some auctorial
license of the "Clockwork Orange" type.

It remains that those words with a resonant
set of connotations work their ways through
naff-ness filters, and those which contrive
to represent this phenomenon often don't.

It is a cliche, almost, to speak of one who
"bats for the other side", yet one Received
Preception of Hindu doctrine is bisexuality
is normal (if undesirable), and "batty" has
been common in some dialects for "daft" for
years and "bats in the belfry" is idiomatic
in Received Standard English. So, we end up
with "Bhatti" as one allusion to homosexual
males in current yoofspeek.

None of it has aught to do with Eve, or the
concept of "sin" either as a spiritual slur
or a metaphor for disease/illness/bad Karma
and whathaveyou. There'd still be scope for
Marmite(TM) jokes if such factors mattered.

And "nits" is just so tame. The year cited,
for the original broadcast, being 1969, the
urban legends of the Cockroach-Nest-BeeHive
Hair-Dos would be common currency and I saw
no reason for this to be children speaking,
where headlice as the reason for pillorying
would be playground fodder.

Or am I mistaken there? If so, kidsTV shows
always did use polite euphemisms instead of
real language--and Mary Whitehouse was far,
far, more concerned with whipping the porno
back to manageable levels, before we turned
into a bunch of perverts.

Maybe she should've studied history as well
as The Bible.

G DAEB

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