|
Hello Parliament Kitty: The city is being extremely frugal with the salting of sidewalks right now. Do they think that only January ice is slippery? Salt my sidewalk cheapskates!
(PS: Only in Canada could we come up with a form of insult based on the quality of one's skates. Actually, I have no idea about the origins of 'cheapskate'.) Comments
Agreed. I used to benefit from high quality sidewalk maintenance in the good end of Sandy Hill. Now that I'm in the pseudo-ghetto of Vanier I may as well put on my skates and skate to downtown, although with the way I skate that may not reduce the number of falls. Ben / 12.06.04Where has the coffee cup gone? 5th Muse / 12.06.04Hah! It's a rockin' out KISS kitty! ao / 12.07.04From word-detective.com: No one knows for certain where the "skate" in "cheapskate" (meaning a very stingy person) came from, although we do know that "cheapskate" first appeared in English around 1896. Authorities are also fairly certain that this kind of "skate" is not related to the "skate" fish, which resembles a ray and takes its name from the Old Norse word "skata." The other common kind of "skate" (as in roller-skate or ice-skate) is also not related to "cheapskate," and comes from an Old French word ("eschasse") meaning "stilts." Go figure. The most plausible theory about the "skate" in "cheapskate" traces it to the Scots word "skate," a term of contempt which apparently also crops up in a slightly different form in the archaic term "blatherskite," meaning a person who blathers, or babbles nonsense. If this theory is true, "cheapskate" would thus translate as essentially "stingy creep," which makes sense. Post a comment
Due to the proliferation of comment spam, I've had to close comments on this entry. If you would like to leave comment, please use one of my recent entries. Thank you and sorry for any inconvience caused.
| ||
Powered by Movable Type | Thanks to Quixotic Pixels |
The little blog from Ottawa, Ontario: Copyright 2004 | |||