As I drove home from the vet's a little while ago with the cats singing a duet of post-shots protest in stereo (one in the back seat, one in the front), I heard something on the radio that made me blush for shame at my own ignorance. Apparently 'drop kick', when used as a noun, is rhyming slang for, well, you know.
I'd always thought it was a particular kind of figure of speech (and I'm sure there's a name for it in classical rhetoric, but I am too lazy to look it up), referring to what one would like to do to the person in question. Whenever I've called someone a drop kick in the past, I've had this very satisfying mental picture of dropping them onto my sturdy boot and punting them out into the traffic. Whenever I say it in future, all I'll have a mental picture of is, well, you know.
7 comments:
No, no, nothing so complex. As in 'prick'.
(Or so I assume.)
I think of your original mental image too, and I'll continue to do so, no matter what the etymology. Much more satisfying.
I sympathise Pavlov. I've been using the term indiscriminately since highschool and I winced when the ocassionally reliable Crikey insisted that it was short for "drop kick and punt".
I refuse to believe!
Oh dear. Perhaps the Daddy was right.
I remember being devastated once after I'd been going round for years saying 'You berk!' to people and was then told it was rhyming slang, short for the Berkshire Hunt. I would have liked to refuse to believe, but that one really has got the ring of truth.
I'm sure they said things like that in the Famous Five, as in: 'I say, you're a bit of a flop, Dick!' etc.
Perhaps I'm a bit lost here but I always thought it was a footy reference -- someone passed you the ball and you dropped it when really you should have kicked a goal.
I always had the kicking image in my head when using that expression and shall also stubbornly continue to. I had to read your comments in order to understand what the "well you know" was referring to.
Sometimes I lead a sheltered life.
I'm really going to show my age, I always thought it meant the same as a sandwich short of a picnic.
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