Crosswords0 min ago
Pejorative
6 Answers
What was the origin of the phrase "big girl's blouse"?
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Nobody really knows - although Hilda Baker may have invented it:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-big3.htm
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-big3.htm
Michael Quinion, in the link in the answer above, says about the origin of this phrase that "your guess is as good as mine". In other words, nobody really knows, so here's my guess. It is possibly just a play on words, in which 'full' was supposedly mistaken for 'fool'.
The one thing you can state categorically about a real big girl's blouse is that it is 'full'...of big girl, that is! As a result, I imagined that calling a man a big girl's blouse might be roughly equivalent to calling him a 'fool'. I appreciate that it refers to the soppy, effeminate, wimpish element, but any man showing such a tendency could easily be considered and, therefore, called a fool as well...as in "You can't drink Coke in a pub, you fool!"
As a matter of interest, Quinion also refers to "Well, I'll go to the foot of our stairs!" I'm convinced that that was originally simply a euphemism for the much cruder "Well, I'll go to f*&^!" Note the fact that the f sound is maintained and, having said the word foot, clearly something had to be added to indicate what it was the foot of.
The one thing you can state categorically about a real big girl's blouse is that it is 'full'...of big girl, that is! As a result, I imagined that calling a man a big girl's blouse might be roughly equivalent to calling him a 'fool'. I appreciate that it refers to the soppy, effeminate, wimpish element, but any man showing such a tendency could easily be considered and, therefore, called a fool as well...as in "You can't drink Coke in a pub, you fool!"
As a matter of interest, Quinion also refers to "Well, I'll go to the foot of our stairs!" I'm convinced that that was originally simply a euphemism for the much cruder "Well, I'll go to f*&^!" Note the fact that the f sound is maintained and, having said the word foot, clearly something had to be added to indicate what it was the foot of.
Thank you both for your answers.
With due respect to Q, I am not convinced by the explanation of "Well, I go to the foot of our stairs" as it seems unlikely that the would have crept in. The meaning is not in doubt ("Well, I never heard the like!") which could have become "Well, I'm off!", or "Well, that's me done!". I think "our" can be discounted as being a frequently used 'add-on', as in "Where have you been 'till now, our Susan?"
And to return to the original suggestion, an equally common expression of surprise or disbelief is "Well, I go to our house!"
With due respect to Q, I am not convinced by the explanation of "Well, I go to the foot of our stairs" as it seems unlikely that the would have crept in. The meaning is not in doubt ("Well, I never heard the like!") which could have become "Well, I'm off!", or "Well, that's me done!". I think "our" can be discounted as being a frequently used 'add-on', as in "Where have you been 'till now, our Susan?"
And to return to the original suggestion, an equally common expression of surprise or disbelief is "Well, I go to our house!"
What's wrong with the 'obvious' answer for its meaning? That is that a 'blouse' is a woman's garment. A 'girl's blouse' is that of a young female, one who is younger, smaller, less strong, than a woman,a child maybe.Calling a man or boy 'a big girl' is obviouly insulting, suggesting he's weak, cowardly or effeminate. Calling him a 'big girl's blouse' combines elements of both, but 'big' is an intensifier in insults anway :'you big jessie' and so on.The change of wearer to garment is not unknown. (In Welsh a weak, feeble, or cowardly man is called what translates as petticoat).Indeed, in slang, we call women 'skirt' '. The above doesn't give the origin, who first said it , but is a simpler explanation that extrapolating 'fool' from it LOL
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