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-   -   Divided common language question (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=17514)

Michael Juster 04-13-2012 08:33 PM

Divided common language question
 
Does "tool" have some sexual connotations in the UK?

No need to get too explicit...

Patricia A. Marsh 04-13-2012 08:42 PM

Yes. http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/index.htm

Michael Cantor 04-13-2012 09:13 PM

Mike - it has exactly the same connotations in the US. You really have to get out more.

Jesse Anger 04-13-2012 09:25 PM

Its phallic connotations are secondary to its connotations of idiocy. I don't talk about my tool but I know a guy who is one. Then there's dick -- that guy's a dick, but that's more like calling him an asshole. Strange.

Skip Dewahl 04-13-2012 10:47 PM

Heard (sic) this line in a British movie comedy, but still don't know what was supposed to be so funny about it: "Wait, wait, let me get the dictionary out of my fanny-pack to confirm or disprove some or all of that!"

Michael Cantor 04-13-2012 11:15 PM

Indeed, "tool" has a rich history in the UK. Here are some examples from a wonderful little book called Some Limericks, by Norman Douglas, privately printed in 1928. I found it at the bottom of my father's shirt drawer when I was about eight years old, and for a great many years everything I knew about rhyme and meter - and sex, for that matter, and even geography (and probably a few things about the English upper classes) - came from that slim volume.

There was an old man of the Cape,
who buggared a Barbary ape.
The ape said: "You fool!
You've got a square tool;
You've buggared my arse out of shape."

There was an old man of Stamboul
With a varicose vein in his tool.
In attempting to come
Up a little boy's bum
It burst, and he did look a fool.

Jerome Betts 04-14-2012 03:59 AM

Skip. it eventually dawned that 'fanny-pack' must be the equivalet of 'bum-bag'. Out of context the line doesn't seem obviously funny. Perhaps there was supposed to be some amusement for UK audiences in hearing the unfamiuliar US 'fanny-pack'?

Jayne Osborn 04-14-2012 04:17 AM

Skip,
As Jerome says, we don't use the term 'fanny-pack' in the UK. (I'm not surprised you didn't find that line funny - it's a pretty dire attempt at comedy!)

Michael,
There's also the use of 'tool' to mean a gun, as in 'he was tooled up'. This has given rise, on numerous occasions, to ambiguities such as: "He's got a very big tool", "I told him to put his tool away" etc.

Jayne

Michael Juster 04-14-2012 04:49 AM

That's helpful. "Tool" it is.

Thank you all.

P.S. Michael, coming to Powow twice a year isn't enough getting out?

John Whitworth 04-14-2012 08:13 AM

Norman Douglas can't spell. And in my opinion, on the evidence of these two limericks, Robert Conquest aka Jeff Chaucer is much better. Try him.

A person who is a tool is not the same as a person who is a prick, not the same at all. And I think if you call someone a penis, as people do in 'Four Weddings and a Funeral', is something else again.

Got it, old cock?


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