{"id":599,"date":"2006-12-11T05:52:19","date_gmt":"2006-12-11T04:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/index.php\/archive\/599\/"},"modified":"2006-12-11T07:20:53","modified_gmt":"2006-12-11T06:20:53","slug":"599","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/archive\/599\/","title":{"rendered":"You Dirty Rotten Plurals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m going to start quoting email correspondence that may be of interest to the Reader. If only so I can try out the Indent Block Quote button on this new diary entry form.<\/p>\n<p>Master Hughes writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Oh, Mr. Edwards &#8211;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Including the spam email, the swines.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>the plural of &#8216;swine&#8217; is &#8230;..&#8217;swine&#8217;. Tsk, tsk!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Just looked this up. Both the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries give &#8216;swines&#8217; as acceptable in the plural, as long as I&#8217;m using it to mean the old-fashioned slang for contemptible person, and not for pigs.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.askoxford.com\/concise_oed\/swine?view=uk\">Oxford link<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.cambridge.org\/define.asp?key=80610&#038;dict=CALD\">Cambridge link <\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also seems funnier than just &#8216;swine&#8217;.  I&#8217;m aware of the comedian Russell Brand&#8217;s endorsement of phrases like  &#8220;the swines!&#8221; as part of his curious mix of 2006 Estuary English and an affected old-fashioned vernacular. But he&#8217;s picking up a tradition. Though I concur that there&#8217;s more to Mr Brand&#8217;s style than just that. And I&#8217;m hardly best placed for accusing <em>others <\/em>of using an archaic vocabulary to attract attention.<br \/>\n&#8220;You dirty rotten swines&#8221; is a <em>Goon Show<\/em> catchphrase, and Mr Sellers uses it in <em>Dr Strangelove<\/em> when playing the stiff-upper-lip RAF officer:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I was tortured by the Japanese, Jack, if you must know; not a pretty story.<br \/>\nGeneral Jack D. Ripper: When they tortured you, did you talk?<br \/>\nMandrake: Well, I don&#8217;t think they wanted me to talk really. I don&#8217;t think they wanted me to say anything. It was just their way of having a bit of fun, the swines. Strange thing is they make such bloody good cameras.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m going to start quoting email correspondence that may be of interest to the Reader. If only so I can try out the Indent Block Quote button on this new diary entry form. Master Hughes writes: Oh, Mr. Edwards &#8211; &#8220;Including the spam email, the swines.&#8221; the plural of &#8216;swine&#8217; is &#8230;..&#8217;swine&#8217;. Tsk, tsk! Just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}