Friday 23 March 2012

What That Really Means...

[Men aren’t scared of commitment as such] - what they’re scared of is commitment too soon, and “too soon” simply means “before he’s thought of it himself”. yahoo.com

It is up to parents to determine the way they want to help their children navigate boundaries and how they define right and wrong (David Lammy, January 29, 2012) = parents should be allowed to smack their children.

"It was scripted" turns out to mean "Clarkson arranged with the producer beforehand that he'd say something about the strikers". He didn't learn lines, or read off an autocue. (Like TOWIE is a “scripted reality show”?)

Profits before environment (which translates as: profits before YOUR well-being).

That reminds me of John Lanchester's review of Intellectual Impostures and his complaints about the 'stultifying rigour' of the sciences. At first reading I took his review to be a piss-take, satirizing post-modernist attitudes. His complaint about stultifying rigour could be paraphrased as "Having to know what you're talking about is so boring." (Friend JP writes)

Had an old dealer in moaning that people are too educated & you can't get bargains any more! (translated he can't rip people off as easy) Antique dealer @LadyKentmores

When people say “there used to be a living in it, but not any more”, they mean “I don’t want you muscling in on my patch” (antiques runner, voiceover artist). But then if you’re a freelance it’s very annoying if people want you to tell them how to “break into the market” – ie give them all your contacts so that they can do the work that’s paying your mortgage/bread and butter.


More euphemisms here. More here. And here, here, here, here, here and here. And here.

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