LURGY
This week's word is one my Dad used frequently. It's also quite a suitable one since we've all had it over the past days to some degree or other!
To have "the dreaded lurgy" seems to have originated from one particular episode of 'The Goon Show' back in the early fifties. According to my Dad, if you had the lurgy you were suffering from a cold or perhaps some 'flu' symptoms but this wasn't the case, it seems, on the Goon show. They used it to refer to some terrible imaginary outbreak of who knows what which could "swamp the whole of the British Isles in Six weeks".
It could well have been linked with an expression from the north of England which originated during WWII - 'fever-largie' meaning a sudden attack of laziness.
Knowing just a little about Spike Milligan as I do, one can imagine him being "tickled by the idea of an epidemic outbreak of idleness".
All info. taken from worldwidewords.org If you like words like I do this is THE web to browse.
It could well have been linked with an expression from the north of England which originated during WWII - 'fever-largie' meaning a sudden attack of laziness.
Knowing just a little about Spike Milligan as I do, one can imagine him being "tickled by the idea of an epidemic outbreak of idleness".
All info. taken from worldwidewords.org If you like words like I do this is THE web to browse.
1 comment:
Grandad never ceases to amaze...
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