Theseus
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I recently heard of some friend's in-laws described thus, hence the apparent double thread:-
'--My father-in-law is pompous and my sister-in-law po-faced but I like my mother-in-law.'
Pompous is here used to mean that his father-in-law is always using inflated words and is pontifical in manner--he never likes being contradicted, steeples his fingers constantly and likes to correct everyone he talks to if he thinks they are wrong.
Po-faced is common enough in Britain as a term for someone who is priggish, narrow-minded, disapproving or humourless, who always look 'as if they have the whiff of dog muck under their nose' but the word is not widely known elsewhere; it does occasionally appear in America, though mostly in writings by British authors.
It’s usually supposed to derive from the slang term po for a chamber pot (it rhymes with no), first recorded in the 1880s. But the abbreviation is more likely to be from the French pot de chambre than from the English term. It was probably influenced by the interjection pooh for something that’s distasteful, which is of course related to the verb to pooh-pooh meaning to express contempt or disdain for something; both are conventional reformulations of the noise one makes with the lips when appearing to blow away something unpleasant.
I liked the alliteration and wonder if it can be reproduced in Greek.
'--My father-in-law is pompous and my sister-in-law po-faced but I like my mother-in-law.'
Pompous is here used to mean that his father-in-law is always using inflated words and is pontifical in manner--he never likes being contradicted, steeples his fingers constantly and likes to correct everyone he talks to if he thinks they are wrong.
Po-faced is common enough in Britain as a term for someone who is priggish, narrow-minded, disapproving or humourless, who always look 'as if they have the whiff of dog muck under their nose' but the word is not widely known elsewhere; it does occasionally appear in America, though mostly in writings by British authors.
It’s usually supposed to derive from the slang term po for a chamber pot (it rhymes with no), first recorded in the 1880s. But the abbreviation is more likely to be from the French pot de chambre than from the English term. It was probably influenced by the interjection pooh for something that’s distasteful, which is of course related to the verb to pooh-pooh meaning to express contempt or disdain for something; both are conventional reformulations of the noise one makes with the lips when appearing to blow away something unpleasant.
I liked the alliteration and wonder if it can be reproduced in Greek.
