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Pooh-Bah
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In the 'Skillet' thread there has been some incidental discussion of the word ‘gutters’ and of ‘gutter press’. All I can ascertain is the following, but the matter seems obscure and Snopes is silent:
The Gutter Press:
A colporteur is a person who sells goods in the street. The word seems to be connected, probably by alteration via the French ‘col’ for neck or collar, with the Old French ‘comporteur’, pedlar. Imagine goods sold from a tray supported by a strap around the neck (something I remember seeing in the East End of London just after WW 2. All those unemployed ex-servicemen).
Nowadays the word is used specifically to define an itinerant seller of religious tracts. The ‘colportage laws’ were passed at the time Scotland joined the Union (1707) and were intended to protect the sellers of dissenting religious literature should England become Catholic once more. The laws said that you did not require a licence in order to legally sell literature in the street. Newspaper sellers took advantage of this freedom and used it to hawk their papers from the pavements’ edges – hence the term ‘gutter press’.
That all sounds very nice, but I am really not convinced, and if anyone can add to it, please do.
Oh yes, colportage has been a wwftd (Hi tsuwm).
Gutter:
including the connection with candles, is easier:
Gutter - To make gutters or furrows. To flow in channels or streams.
Guttering – the channels placed round the edge of a roof to collect rainwater.
Also used to describe an unevenly or weakly burning candle resulting in unevenly melted wax at the top of the candle forming gutters that result in ribbons of wax running down the sides.
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Candles "guttering": "Also used to describe an unevenly or weakly burning candle resulting in unevenly melted wax at the top of the candle forming gutters that result in ribbons of wax running down the sides.
Very enlightening, dxb. I wondered about that connection [in other thread].
I share your doubt that "gutter press" goes back to hawkers selling newspapers from the curb in England. My guess is they were probably selling respectable newspapers like The Times of London or The Observer [just like the headline shouters did in Walter Winchell's days - what did they call those those newsboys, anyway, I wonder?]
The operative word in "gutter press" is "gutter" not "press".
Of course, the thing which distinguishes the "gutter press" from the rest of the press is the trash it collects and purveys - bearing in mind, of course, that gutters collect trash in the run-off, and the "gutter press" runs-off nothing else but trash.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Hi, dxb [blowing kiss e]; I would imagine that the term came about because gutters, pretty much by definition, are dirty. If someone's life is in the gutter, that's as low as they can get. So if a..."news"paper publishes some dirt on public figures, well...
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Carpal Tunnel
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I had thought just as Jackie wrote above about the gutters where I imagine alcoholics passed out and sleeping in the gutters without a place to sleep. Down and out.
But, come to think of it, in my entire life I've never witnessed a person sleeping in a gutter or have seen someone passed out in a gutter. I've never even literally seen a person with his head in the gutter.
Did gutters ever in history carry along sewage?
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Carpal Tunnel
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>Did gutters ever in history carry along sewage?
pssst, Wordwither'd*, brush up on your history.
1711 -- Johnathan Swift notes the contents of London's gutters: "sweepings from butchers' stalls, dung, guts and blood, drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud..."
(see the Plague Years, or the Black Death)
---
* - "the winds were wither'd in the stagnant air" - Byron
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Sounds like there is a connection between "guttering" and "guttural".
Main Entry: gut·tur·al
Pronunciation: 'g&-t&-r&l, 'g&-tr&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle French, probably from Medieval Latin gutturalis, from Latin guttur throat
1 : articulated in the throat <guttural sounds>
2 : VELAR
3 : being or marked by utterance that is strange, unpleasant, or disagreeable
- guttural noun
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The two half-round grooves on either side of a bowling lane are called gutters, and although I've never slept there I've been in there a few times.
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re bowling lane guttersThanks, musick. Now I know where "guttural" comes from. It's that sound that escapes from a bowler when he's just blown his lead in the gutter. It's the same sound you hear from a golfer when he's just scorched a worm-burner into the pond in front of the Ladie's Tee. Is that embarrassing or what -- especially with all the ladies watching. I've scorched a few worm-burners in front of the ladies around here, but you can't hear my guttural noises over the Internet. That's probably a good thing. I'm sure the ladies think so. But ladies make guttural noises too. Have you listened to the top lady tennis players lately? * They put everything they've got behind those backhands. I'd hate to be on the receiving end of one of those blasts, musick, wouldn't you? Well, actually those blasts are more like grunts because they come from the gut, not the back of the throat. Is this getting confusing, musick? It is for me. Serena, Davenport reach Australian finalAmerican women to play for Grand Slam title tonight posted Friday, January 28, 2005 * The intensity of Sharapova's shrieks and Williams' grunts increased with nearly every point down the stretch. Both players showed jitters at times, and both also hit some great shots under pressure.http://www.hollandsentinel.com/stories/012805/spo_012805036.shtml
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although I've never slept there I've been in there a few times.
One night in late October,
When I was far from sober,
Returning with my load with manly pride,
My feet began to stutter,
So I lay down in the gutter,
And a pig came near and lay down by my side;
A lady passing by was heard to say:
"You can tell a man who boozes,
By the company he chooses,"
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.
~Benjamin Hapgood Burt (1933)
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TEd
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actually, a colporteur could be a lapsed parson, enticingly selling tracts to attractive farmer's landholding daughters.
>It's a song writer.
that seems so single-minded; I must be missing the double entente.
- ron (bill of goods) obvious
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Gosh, and here I thought a colporteur was some lyricist singing about anything that went while carrying something bituminous to Newcastle.
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Ahem. I say, ahem.
Miss Otis regrets that All through the Night I'm a Gigolo, but Night and Day the wisdom of Solomon says to Experiment and Begin the Begging because In the Still of the Night I Get a Kick out of You. But Anything Goes because You're the Top and Easy to Love, so Why Shouldn't I Rap Tap on Wood
to tell you I have Love for Sale and Ask the Physician if It's Bad for me that I Happen to Like New York. Let's Step Out and ask Mister and Missus Fitch if Anything Goes From This Moment On. My Heart Belongs to Daddy but its Alright with Me if you Don't Fence Me In.
Must STOP this. Must STOP this.
It's Just One of those Things.
TEd
TEd
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And the pig got up and slowly walked away.
Et sus surrexit abiitque lente.
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Not to ignore Faldage, but, Ted:
"I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop,
But if baby I'm the bottom, you're the top..."
Edit: Oh, and please don't stop!
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Do y'all know the last verse to "You're the Top"?! (It's not recorded much, she said, understating)
Plutarchi, if you care to respond, could you keep it under a screen's worth, please?
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You're the top! You're the Tower of Babel.
You're the top! You're the Whitney Stable.
By the River Rhine, You're a sturdy stein of beer,
You're a dress from Saks's, You're next year's taxes,'
You're stratosphere.
You're my thoist, You're a Drumstick Lipstick,
You're da foist in da Irish svipstick,
I'm a frightened frog that can find no log to hop,
But if, Baby, I'm the bottom,
You're the top!
Lyrics: Cole Porter
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>You're my thoist, You're a Drumstick Lipstick,
an early example of product insertion?
>You're da foist in da Irish svipstick
they just don't write lyrics like this any more.
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Well, DubDub, as it turns out, the last verse is indeed a parody. Upon googling I discovered that Irving Berlin wrote it, not Cole Porter. I reproduce it in white to protect those who are prurient-sensitive: You're the top!
You're Miss Pinkham's tonic.
You're the top!
You're a high colonic.
You're the burning heat of a bridal suite in use
You're the breasts of Venus,
You're King Kong's penis,
You're self-abuse.
You're an arch from the Rome collection.
You're the starch in a groom's erection.
I'm a eunuch who has undergone an 'op',
But if, baby, I'm the bottom
You're the top. http://ernunnos.livejournal.com/819203.htmlalso http://www.time.com/time/sampler/article/0,8599,190220,00.html
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Pooh-Bah
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While looking up gutter and its derivatives, I found a couple of surprises. Most of my sources agreed with our understanding here of the meaning of guttersnipe (such as, from Webster’s Unabridged: guttersnipe … n one belonging to or characteristic of the lowest social group in a city.), but one source had a different meaning for guttersnipe and related terms.
From Slang and Euphemism Dictionary, Richard Spears:
gut-stick the penis. [British slang, 1800s, Farmer and Henley]
gutter the female genitals. Cf. COMMON SEWER, DRAIN, SCUPPER. [British slang, 1800s, Farmer and Henley]
gutter slut a low prostitute; a common whore. For synonyms see HARLOT. [U.S., early 1900s]
guttersnipe 1. a GUTTER SLUT (q.v.) [widespread colloquial, 1800s – pres.] 2. a prostitute. [British 1800s, Farmer and Henley]
Since these slang terms, old as they are, are British, could any of our Brit posters elaborate? Have they ever heard these terms used in these ways?
Also, I wondered at this discussion in Horsefeathers & Other Curious Words, Charles Earle Funk & Charles Earle Funk, Jr.:
guttersnipe He, or quite often she, frequently a child or street Arab, gathers a living from the gutter, or less literally, from discarded rags, trash, or other refuse, including food. His mode of living, that is, resembles that of the snipe which pokes its bill into the mud lining a body of water for its food. The term, originating as slang, is not quite a hundred years old.
Has anyone ever seen the term “street Arab” before? I’m guessing that it has gone the way of other racial and ethnic invectives, but apparently was in common use at least until the 1950s, when the source was published. The term suggests a nomadic existence, I think?
I was also amused to learn that two diseases owe their names to the same gutter cluster.
From Origins A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, Eric Partridge:
goiter, goiter; ajd goitrous.
1. The adj derives from F goitreux f goitreuse, from goiter, adopted by E and Americanized as goiter. The EF(-F) goiter, borrowed from a dial of the Rhone valley, is a b/f from OF-EF goitron, throat, gullet, which in the MF of SE France, took the sense “goiter”, a thyroid-gland protuberance on the neck. OF goitron derives from VL *gutturionem, acc of *gutturio, from L gutter, throat.
gout (whence, gouty), orig as :gout of blood”, later in Med sense, OF-MF goute, var of OF-F goutte, from L gutta, a drop of water, blood, etc; r gut-, ? akin to the syn Arm kat’n (E & M); prob imitative.
2. OF goute, a drop, has derivative OF-MF gutiere, goutiere (F gouttiere), lit a receptacle (connoted by –lere, F lere) for drops of water, a course – an open pipe – for rainwater on a roof or in a road; hence ME gotere, later gutere; hence E gutter (whence “to gutter”). Hence the at first sl guttersnipe, a “snipe” of the roadway gutters.
It interested me to observe that both goiter and gout came to us through French. Is this because French was the language of medicine at the time these diseases were first described?
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Pooh-Bah
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Since these slang terms, old as they are, are British, could any of our Brit posters elaborate? Have they ever heard these terms used in these ways? ~ Sparteye
Can't say I have. I would have guessed 'gutter slut' correctly, but so would we all!
Other terms that you reference are much more recent and I would'nt be surprised to hear them used today - I certainly wouldn't say that no one uses them anymore, in fact I'm sure my father would!
'Guttersnipe', for example, is definitely still used on occasion and 'street arab' was in common use by older people until recently and maybe still is. 'Street urchin' is another such expression and all three refer to children.
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Not sure I can be definitive about it, but I think I have heard both gutter slut and street Arab. As for the goitre and gout coming via French (and as a Brit I stick to goitre!), this could be related to when the words came into English. We did have a Norman invasion and a lot of Latinate words came via French rather than directly because of that. Unfortunately my dictionary (Shorter OED) has no citations earlier than 1600's, so I can't back that suggestion up. 
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