Skip to main content

More words and where they're from

Brat


 So now I turn to one of my father's favorite words, which says a lot for my brothers, my sister and myself -- brat.  A brat is basically a bad child, and according to the Collins Dictionary etymologicial listings comes to us from the O.E. bratt, a poor child's piece of clothing, which in turn is from the Celtic brat meaning a piece of cloth one wore just to cover the body.

 I shouldn't really mention that I'm referring to my students when I think of this word, but suddenly it just popped into my head.  A brat, and especially the stronger spoiled brat, is an obnoxious, misbehaving child who demands things -- notably attention -- and whose behavior is far from decorous.  Perfect examples of brats, including the spoiled variety, would be Justin Bieber*, Paris Hilton*, any of the Kardashians*, most professional soccer players* here in Europe, and of course One Direction*.  All you want to do is slap them across the face and send them packing or make them stand in a corner.

 Besides spoiled brat, there is also the expression army brat, which is not a put-down or an insult at all.  It refers to the child or children of a military officer who are shifted from one home and one city every two years as the officer's career changes -- in essence, children who do not have time to put down any roots and make friends.

 In the 1980s, there was also reference to the Brat Pack of actors (Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Rob Lowe, and many other now 50 year olds you may recognize but have never heard of) who were in such 80s teen classics (irony) as St. Elmo's Fire or The Breakfast Club at the movies, or My So-Called Life on television.  Having been a teenager during the disco & funk era, I missed that pop wave and am clearly happy to have spent more time with Earth, Wind & Fire, the Emotions, Evelyn "Champagne" King and Rick James rather than with some whiny Hollywood wannabes.  The epitome of the brat came even later on in the 1990s with the advent of the Spice Girls*.  
*    *    *    *    *

Aha!  But wait -- in Wisconsin where I'm originally from, we also have brats but these are pronounced [bra:ts] or /brahts/ and come from the German Bratwurst and are amongst my favorite summertime barbecue foods.  Pure pork, they came with the German settlers to the upper Midwest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and are enjoyed by millions and by the millions** each summer.  Truly delicious for meat-eaters, they used to be manufactured almost by hand in my home town by a local company, and were a true Wisconsin treat to be enjoyed on a bakery bun with your favorite fixings -- catsup or ketchup (see future blog post), brown or yellow mustard -- the debate continues! -- pickle relish, onions, sauerkraut or any other savory condiment.




*    *    *    *    *

So since it's Friday and I'm in a good mood -- and for no other reason -- here is a bunch of brats parading and galavanting on a studio set mouthing the words to their own "song."  Have a good weekend.






*Pop "culture" "personalities" that I abhor and only mention to make fun of them and their vapidness and false sense of talent.
**By millions refers to people; by the millions refers to the number of bratwurst eaten each summer.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where English is from?

If you don't know where English is from, you really don't understand the language.  This map shows where the Germanic languages originated from, but excludes English, unfortuately. Basically, after Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic emerged in an area east of the Rhine river and extending through the northern portion of Europe to roughly what today is the east of Poland, and then again northwards. The Whole Germanic Branch 1 No Eastern Germanic languages have survived to our modern era (see below). In essence, the Germanic branch of Indo-European is organized geographically:  West, which itself is divided into Western, Northern and High (i.e. mountain ); North, also subdivided into Western and Eastern; and East Germanic.  Many of these languages share similar characteristics, though some have very original points themselves: Many have verb-final positions, meaning that in compound or complex sentences, only the first auxiliary verb is placed ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Feeling a bit Irregular with your Verbs?

Feeling a bit Irregular with your Verbs? Are you down?  Feeling irregular?   Out of sorts ?  Not yourself lately?  Try taking an irregular verb or two and having a rest... Enough of this advertisement-inspired silliness.  As you know, English is a Germanic language, and thus -- like all of the Germanic languages in fact -- it contains a relatively large number of irregular verbs .  (If it's any consolation German and Dutch do too.)  This means that, to speak the language properly, you have to learn all of the different parts: Infinitive -- for most of the verbs, the infinitive will either be the same or very similar to the verb in all of its present simple forms, except for the mandatory "-s/-es" for the third person singular. Past-tense conjugation -- for all of the verbs, this will be the only form that you will need to make references to things, events, times, etc. in the simple past.  Most of the changes will be made in this cate...
Post a Comment
Read more
Bab Mansour Gate in Meknès, Morocco Hi all.   Well, it happens:  the end of the semester, entrance exams, finals and their subsequent corrections, calculating grades, translations of academic research articles (I'm working on one parallel to this blog post...), and all after having gone through some pretty heavy personal changes this winter -- most for the best, thankfully -- all means that I needed to take some time off.   Hence , Morocco and for nearly 3 weeks*.   Vacation (US) or holidays (GB) are a crucial necessity and allow one to take a break from one's everyday and occasionally humdrum routine and think about other things:  sights, sounds, smells, all of the senses are called into play in beautiful Morocco. Medersa Bou Inania, Fez, Morocco The country remains challenging for the Westernly minded, and in fact if you go there one day, it's best just to drop all of your preconceived notions of how life "should be," and accept the fact that ...
Post a Comment
Read more