Sunday 13 October 2013

Words and Phrases, a Continuing Series

The redoubtable @boeufblogginon has reminded me of another horrible modern phrase: "talk to the hand". Where did it come from, what does it mean and why does it make me almost as annoyed as the sound of plastic bags being rustled, (particularly in cinemas)?

6 comments:

  1. In the eighties, at least here in the U.S, there was a trend of holding up a hand to stop someone from talking. Soon, the phrase "talk to the hand" was attached to it. I guess the motion was dropped and the phrase remained... Either way, it seems to have developed out of rudeness, even if it was meant to be funny.

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    1. Rudeness, that's the annoying bit, and there's so much of it around, sadly.

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  2. a. I'm guessing it came from TV.
    b. It refers to holding out a hand with (or as if with) a sock puppet: the full phrase is something like "talk to the hand, the face don't care'.
    c. I thought it was as dead as "Twenty-three skiddoo!" or other such phrases that amused us or our ancestors long ago.
    d. Perhaps you should revive "I'll answer you by hand", a thinly or unveiled threat of fisticuffs. I've only seen it one of Ivan Doig's novels; the context makes me think that it must have been current in the Scotland of the late 1800s.

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    1. I should carry around gauntlets to fling on the ground, maybe. (Twenty-three skiddoo? - it sounds more fun and less aggressive than the hand thing, but who knows)

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  3. Outlook Express, Firefox, Excel; some of many abominations of language penned by a computer nerds.

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    1. Mozilla, Chrome and all spreadsheets, a plague on them

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