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#95728 02/15/03 09:54 PM
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wwh Offline OP
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In TIME for Feb.17 review of William Boyd's "Any Human Heart" the reviewer says "....in what
amounts to literary incest, Mounstuart indulges in a brief snog with Waugh himself."

I found a page on BBC news that uses "snog" as a teenage term for osculation. Somehow that
doesn't seem to fit the use in the book review.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1443007.stm#map

Comments, please. Bonzaialsatian, where are you when I need you?
Or dodyskin, who has been neglecting us for too long.


#95729 02/15/03 09:57 PM
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While familiar with "snog", and happy with its use in the snippet you provided, I'm much more interested in the word "Brotosj" - please elucidate.


#95730 02/15/03 10:03 PM
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Dear sjm: Typos get away from me much easier than they used to. I can check them only
out of corner of my left eye. Somehow I have difficulty imagining two male superegotists
"swapping spit". Even if one of them is fictitious.


#95731 02/16/03 10:14 AM
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I've always known the word snog as slang for (quoting from the site) Kissing with all the trimmings - except dribble., though in the stories I've heard it's always dribble included .
I was a bit suprised about the British origin though - for some reason I'd always thought that 'snog' came from the US.

Another thing: fringe is slang? I'm confused.


#95732 02/16/03 11:05 AM
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> Somehow I have difficulty imagining two male superegotists
"swapping spit".

Perhaps your oversight was that its use in the text is in a purely metaphorical sense intended to be witty. Of course 'snog' might just be a type-o fir 'song' ;-)

Rather than snog, I've always, as an Australian born English speaker, liked 'to pash (on)'.


#95733 02/16/03 02:23 PM
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From one OldTimer to another : snog = smooch = "making out."
And a Big Smooch to you, you ol' devil!


#95734 02/17/03 09:24 AM
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Snog is, as far as I know, purely British in origin. As BY points out, the antipodes have their own cultivars, as do the USns.

- Pfranz

#95735 02/17/03 05:08 PM
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From one OldTimer to another : snog = smooch = "making out."

That's correct. It has always seemed to me to have an unpleasant sound for what should be a pleasant enough occupation. Teenagers enjoy doing that with the words they invent, I think. I guess its a form of rhetoric, is there a word for it?


#95736 02/17/03 05:51 PM
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:Understatement is both UK and US disinclination "to shoot sparrows with a cannon". So
it is an extension of understatement to use a seemingly derogatory term rather than a
mawkish conventional term.


#95737 02/17/03 05:58 PM
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an extension of understatement to use a seemingly derogatory term

See also swap spit.


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