I've just tonight caught an actual citation for gong-farmer.

"Harry King's men took away everything. You saw their carts everywhere. Every rag-and-bone man and rubbish picker, every dunnikin diver, every gongfermor, every scrap-metal merchant ... you worked for Harry King, they said, because a broken leg was bad for business, and Harry King was all about business."
- Terry Pratchett, Making Money (2007)

Gongfermor?

that's the way Pratchett and others spell it.

James Murray also found fyrmar, fermer, and fermourer.

-joe (farmer-farmer) friday

Yeahbut© does that make it farmer? How do you know it isn't gongformer or gongfirmer?

>>James Murray also found fyrmar, fermer, and fermourer.
>How do you know it isn't gongformer or gongfirmer?

what do I know?! it was Murray who listed them under..

farmer[1]
Obs. One who cleanses or purifies. In comb. gong-farmer. Obs.
c1440 Promp. Parv. 203 Goonge fyrmar [v.r. gonge~fowar], cloacarius. c1515 Cocke Lorell's B. (Percy Soc.) 3 Than came a gonge fermourer, Other wyse called a masser scourer. Ibid. 11 Stynkynge gonge fermers.

-joe (we don' need no stynkynge gonge fermers) friday

p.s. - what's your point, Faldo? are you suggesting it's not the same term as our hogwash word??

I ain't saying it ain't. I was just asking if it was.

Oh, Jackie - you never did reveal which of the 2005-Hogwash daffyinitions of gong-farmer had a secret!

>I was just asking if it was.

this isn't the first time we've seen evidence of Murray "standardizing" spelling, without him showing any citations to back it up.

Now somebody finally asks? Nearly 2½ years later?! I did go back and re-read all the PM'ed definitions I got, and for some reason I'm thinking it might have been Connie, but after all this time I really don't remember!

I suppose you've forgotten the secret, too.

Yes--that's what I meant. At the time, I figured I'd wait till somebody showed interest* before "the reveal"; but my memory didn't last this long!

*That is, after the real def. was declared--t'would have given away whichever one as a fake, before then. I just figured that once the game was over, everybody must have felt it was time to move on.

BTW, tsuwm, thank you for this citation! :-) It bugged me not to have a "real" one.