#47074
11/07/2001 4:37 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Dec 2000
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I just told someone that something got on my quince. Then being me I went off and looked up 'quince' to see if it would tell me why this peculiar expression exists. Of course it didn't help.
Synonyms: it gets on my wick, it gets on my goat, it gets my goat up, and the prosaic it gets on my nerves.
Does anyone else use the quince, wick, or goat forms, or have any idea what they refer to?
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#47075
11/07/2001 4:49 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156 |
I've heard/used "That really gets my goat." Never thought about it before...
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#47076
11/07/2001 4:59 PM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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get someone's goat
Annoy or anger someone, as in By teasing me about that article I wrote, he's trying to get my goat, but I won't let him. The origin of this expression is disputed. H.L. Mencken held it came from using a goat as a calming influence in a racehorse's stall and removing it just before the race, thereby making the horse nervous. However, there is no firm evidence for this.
origin. [c. 1900]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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#47077
11/07/2001 9:43 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
I use both "it gets my goat" and "it gets on my wick". I imagine that the "wick" part would be related to short fuses and tempers. At least, that's the only explanation I can come up with!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#47078
11/07/2001 11:31 PM
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yes, ditto, CK. And in extremis I even have been known to growl darkly that something "really gets on my tits" 
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#47079
11/07/2001 11:44 PM
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Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636 |
Quince is membrillo in Spanish. "Cómo me saca de honda" would be a comparable phrase. Another is "Cómo friega"
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#47080
11/07/2001 11:46 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393 |
And it gets up my nose.
Bodily imagery I can understand. On my nerves - up my nose - on my tits.
Fractious animal imagery I can understand, though at some remove. It gets on my goat, it gets my gander up??
But the quince, that hedonic fruit, is the most inoffensive possible bearer of this meaning, and I find it quite puzzling. I got this from my parents, one or both of whom say it, and some of their more peculiar expressions turn out to be atavistic Scottish or North Country relics. But I can't say for sure I've ever heard the 'quince' one outside my family.
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#47081
11/07/2001 11:49 PM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 6,296 |
I knew an ancient teacher who used to stroll the school halls like a Spanish galleon. When she had had too much from particular students, she would say, "You have plucked my last nerve!"
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#47082
11/08/2001 12:06 AM
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I wonder if there is any connection with it give me the pip? yeah, I know ICLIU but a man's gotta sleep sometime 
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#47083
11/08/2001 2:40 AM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I got this from my parents, one or both of whom say it, and some of their more peculiar expressions turn out to be atavistic Scottish or North Country relics. But I can't say for sure I've ever heard the 'quince' one outside my family.
Nicholas, I can tell you that it's given as Ozzie slang by OED2 -- I wonder if stales has seen this thread. I'm going to paste in what's there first:
b. Phr. to get on (a person's) quince, to irritate or exasperate. Austral. slang.
1941 Baker Dict. Austral. Slang 58 Get on one's quince, to annoy or aggravate deeply. 1948 Sydney Morning Herald 3 July 9/1 Aw, can it boss! You're gettin' on me quince. 1963 A. E. Farrell Vengeance ii. 19 These bloody trees are getting on me quince! 1974 D. O'Grady Deschooling Kevin Carew 95 In an unguarded moment, he told Bill Moynihan ‘This joint is getting on my quince.’
now, there is another 'quince', which is a variant of 'quinch', which is an obs. variant of 'quitch', all of which are related to wince and flinch, all of which may relate to frayed nerves. I'm not sayin'... I'm just sayin'.
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#47084
11/08/2001 2:52 AM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
Or, as I have heard, "Fair gives me the 'ump."
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#47085
11/08/2001 9:31 AM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 6,296 |
A. E. Farrell Vengeance ii. 19 These bloody trees are getting on me quince! ...tsuwm, I'd love to know the context for this statement...
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#47086
11/08/2001 10:46 AM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 460
addict
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addict
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 460 |
hi tsuwm: Baker [Aust slang] also gives "quince" as an effeminate male; a stupid person
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#47087
11/08/2001 11:07 AM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
>Or, as I have heard, "Fair gives me the 'ump."
Yes, my mother in law "get the hump" (the slightly more upmarket version of 'ump). I assume it relates to the camel.
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#47088
11/08/2001 1:08 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Y'all are just trying to put US'ns on. But it gets my gander up; I'll believe it gets my dander up, and we all know how easily confused the alveolar/palatal/glottal plosives can be.
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#47089
11/08/2001 2:11 PM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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paulb informsBaker [Aust slang] also gives "quince" as an effeminate male...
I can see that; quince just sounds poncey!
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#47090
11/08/2001 2:44 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yup!
"gets my dander up" - causing a rise in temper.
"get's my goat" - something that annoys.
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#47091
11/09/2001 2:05 AM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
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Although there is some dispute about how this colorful term for the uncanny ability of some people to rile us, annoy us, irritate us, vex us, and get under our skin, most lexicographers attribute the origins of get your goat to the world of thoroughbred horse racing. Horse trainers have long put a companion in stalls with high-strung thoroughbreds, particularly volatile stallions. ... Goats, among the most boring and least demanding of animals, soothed horses effectively. Horses tended to become attached to their goat roommates, so much so that rival barns sometimes would steal the goat of a rival the night before a race. The horse would become upset and presumably underperform the next Dayton. So someone whose goat has been gotten is actually being compared to a horse rather than a goat. -- from Who Put the Butter in Butterfly?, David Feldman to get one’s goat ... Efforts have been made to trace this American expression back to a Greek source, but without conspicuous success. The French, however, do have an expression, prendre la chevre, which, though defined, “to take offense,” has the literal meaning, “to take, or to snatch, the goat.” Their expression is said to have appeared as early as the sixteenth century, and does appear in seventeenth century as well as current dictionaries. Nevertheless it is most probable that American usage, traceable only to the early twentieth century , was of independent origin: first, because the French phrase does not have the same literal meaning, and, second, even if it did, the borrowing and literal translation would have been much earlier. One account weakly explains our phrase as derived from the racing stable where, sometimes, a goat browses among the horses on the theory that it has a calming effect upon high-strung racers. Deliberate borrowing of the goat from such a stable might thus be considered an unfriendly act, according to that explanation. Be that as it may, the earliest literary quotation thus far exhumed appears in Jack London’s Smoke Bellew (1912), Chapter VII, “The Little Man,” in which the usage has nothing to do with horse-racing. Here “Smoke” and “the little man” face the danger of crossing a rotting snow-bridge over a crevasse. “The little man” crosses first and waits for “Smoke.” “‘Your turn,’ he called across. ‘But just keep a-coming and don’t look down. That’s what got my goat. Just keep a-coming, that’s all. And get a move on. It’s mighty rotten.’” -- from Heavens to Betsy! & Other Curious Sayings, Charles Funk Another theory, from me: The phrase might be connected to the Army-Navy football rivalry. The goat has been the Navy mascot since at least 1893 (see http://www.nadn.navy.mil/PAO/facts/Goat.html) and I believe that the two academies have tried to kidnap each other’s mascots (Army’s is a mule) ever since. The date and place of first usage would fit, and the meaning of “getting one’s goat” to be an irritant would be a direct lift.
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#47092
11/09/2001 2:07 AM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
To get one’s dander up. ... Dander still means “anger” in the dialectal speech of several English countries, but the full phrase appears to be entirely American. In the dialectal use we find it in Seba Smith’s The Life and Writings of Major Jack Downing, or Downingsville (1830-33), a book dedicated to General Andrew Jackson. In “Letter LXV,” dated July 20, 1833, the Major tells about a quarrel between him and Mr. Van Buren at Concord, in which Van Buren belittles the major’s qualifications for the presidency. “At this,” says the Major, “may dander began to rise ...”
Through the popularity of these humorous yarns and letters, Smith began to have several imitators. The most pretentious was Charles A. Davis, who, in 1834, brought out Letters of J. Downing, Major, Downingville Militia, Second Brigade. In the third “letter,” after describing a dance, in which “Gineral” Jackson participated, the fictitious Downing goes on to say that several of the men, including Van Buren, then tried on Jackson’s coat, after he had retired: “Then cum my turn; but I see how the cat jump’d, ‘so,’ says I, ‘I’ll jest step out and rig in another room:’ and I went strait to the Gineral, and woke him up, and tell’d him all about it -- he was wrathy as thunder -- and when he gets his dander up, it’s no joke, I tell you.”
Hence, to Davis, rather than to Smith, goes the credit, for what it may amount to, for being the first to record this expression. Probably, however, it was a popular phrase of the period, as shortly thereafter it appeared in the works of other writers, among them, Colonel David Crockett in his Life (1835) and upon the lips of “Sam Slick” in Thomas Haliburton’s The Clockmaker (1837-40).
-- from Heavens to Betsy! & Other Curious Sayings, Charles Funk
When a dog or cat is angry or alarmed the hair on its back stands straight up. So too, by analogy, will a person’s. And when he’s thoroughly aroused, according to this humorous phrase, his dandruff will stand up too -- for “dander” is merely “dandruff.”
-- from Dictionary of Word Origins, Jordan Almond
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#47093
11/09/2001 2:28 AM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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just goes to show you that the folks that write these books are jest guessing too -- and it gets on my quince!
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#47094
11/09/2001 2:39 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 428
addict
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addict
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 428 |
The phrase might be connected to the Army-Navy football rivalry. The goat has been the Navy mascot since at least 1893 (see http://www.nadn.navy.mil/PAO/facts/Goat.html) and I believe that the two academies have tried to kidnap each other’s mascots (Army’s is a mule) ever since. The date and place of first usage would fit, and the meaning of “getting one’s goat” to be an irritant would be a direct lift.
This was actually the first thing I thought of, but I figured it would be too recent a fad to have created the phrase, but it looks like at least a possibility. Good thinking (and research)!
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#47095
11/09/2001 3:34 PM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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as mentioned above, Mencken includes the possible racehorse connection in a footnote in The American Language, but what the AHD didn't mention is that Mencken goes on: A variant etymology was printed in the London Morning Post, Jan. 31, 1935. It was so precious that it deserves to be embalmed: "Among the Negores in Harlem it is the custom for each household to keep a goat to act as general scavenger. Occasionally one man will steal another's goat, and the household debris then accumulates, to the general annoyance."
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#47096
11/21/2001 1:41 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 130
member
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member
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Thinking out loud here...
Seems to me that our friends in the UK have a taste for quince jelly. Could it be possible then, that to get on one's quince might refer to the annoyance of finding some kind of detritus or insect alighted on their morning toast?
That would certainly get on my quince... especially if I was late for work.
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#47097
11/21/2001 1:42 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 130
member
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member
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 130 |
Thinking out loud here...
Seems to me that our friends in the UK have a taste for quince jelly. Could it be possible then, that to get on one's quince might refer to the annoyance of finding some kind of detritus or insect alighted on their morning toast?
That would certainly get on my quince... especially if I was late for work.
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