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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I have a memory of seeingthe word "heeler" used as the name for a type of dog in australia. (Confirmation, you OZ'ns?) From the context, I gathered it was a dog used to round up sheep or cattle - presumably by nipping their heels.
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Pooh-Bah
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And there was the indigent cobbler who had a bad cold. He went to the Doctor to ask for some relief, so that he could continue to work, but admitted that he had no money to pay for the treatment at the moment. The doctor told him that, without money, he would not provide medicine and to go away, that the cold would soon clear up.
Some months later, the Doctor's shoe lost its heel leather as he was on his way to an important dinner. He was not carrying his wallet, but he went into the shoe shop and asked if he could have an emergency repair, but that he was unable to pay spot cash.
The cobbler, of course, said, "Physician, heel thyself."
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Rod: because nipping is so undesirable in sheep dogs, at least in trials, I wondered about the meaning of the name "heeler". I found a site about Australian Cattle Dogs, and they do bite, but are chosen not to bite hard. And for cattle rustling, they were chosen not to make any noise. http://www.cattledog.com/misc/history.html
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Carpal Tunnel
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re: the word "foot" because it was unmentionable in Roman society.
thanks dr. bill-- i was thinking about this.. a work friend from years ago was also a biblical scholar and she mentioned that nakedness, and adultry are almost never mentioned directly in the bible, but rather, it would be mentioned that some one had exposed their foot. and this was the short hand for indecent behaviour.. any one else know anything about this? or chapter or verse about playing footsie in the bible?
i wonder if this was why.. and did the biblical scholars pick it up from Roman customs, or did the romans pick it up from the bible...
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When Australian TV used to be broadcast here by satellite there was a police drama series called "Blue Heelers". I never watched it so I can't say more than that. It seemed from the trailers to be set in a fairly rural part of Australia.
Bingley
Bingley
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veteran
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Having been busy lately, I have just discovered and read this thread, and have a number of notes to make to various postings, which I'll get in in one swell foop:
WW: I believe it's slue-foot, not slew-foot, but I could be wrong. Tsuwm, what say you ?
WW: Oedipus means 'pierced foot'. When the infant Oedipus was exposed in his infancy, his heels were pierced. It was by this that he was later exposed as the son of Jocasta, being her husband also. [You like that use of 'exposed' with two different meanings?}
WW: You mention sabots. Were you aware that 'saboteur' comes from 'sabot'? In a European (Belgian, actually, I think) version of the Luddites, workers afraid of being displaced by machines tried to wreck them by throwing their wooden shoes into the machinery.
WW: "Cadence in music" A musical cadence is a usage of two or three related chords at the end of a piece or section to sort of round it off. It's sort of like the rhyming couplet used by Shakespeare to mark the end of a scene or act. The Plegel (not sure of the spelling here) Cadence is the one that sounds like the 'Amen' which used to come at the end of a hymn.
ofTroy: exposing the foot. Businessmen, or businesspersons if you insist, who are contemplating travelling to Arab countries are warned to be careful how they sit when in company of Arabs. Sitting so as to expose the sole of one's foot to an Arab is a deadly insult.
[On second thought, I retract the 'businesspersons'; it can only be businessmen, as I don't believe there are any Arabs who will conduct business with a woman the way we do. Their loss.]
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Dear BobY: I read somewhere fairly recently about a lady journalist who was interviewing a lady intellectual somewhere in southeast Asia, and was surprised to find the lady was scowling at her furiously - because toe of one of her feet was pointing at the lady. Regrettably, the article did not explain why that was a serious breach of good taste.
PS I found a site about, and here is a quote:
The head is the most sacred part of the body, so should not be touched.
The feet are the least sacred, so when sitting they should not point at
anyone - most Thais sit on the floor with their feet tucked under their
bodies behind them. To point, particularly with one’s foot, is extremely
insulting.
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slew-foot (and slew, for that matter) is the usual headword
and slue-foot (and slue) is the variant. F. Scott Fitzgerald spelled it slue-foot; J. B. Priestley used slewfooting. so there's your slew-footed, but equivocal, answer.
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OP
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BobyY: Thanks in particular for "pierced foot"--I'd forgotten the translation. tsuwm: And I loved your slew-footed response. Also, about slew, there's a world of definitions, at least a slew of 'em to study for the marshologist. Here's one retrieved: slews n : a large number or amount; "made lots of new friends" [syn: tons, dozens, heaps, lots, piles, scores, stacks, loads, rafts, wads, oodles, gobs, scads, lashings]
Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton UniversityCatch a kittenkaboodle or kittenkaslewdle of them at: http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=slewsWoodenShoe
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I believe it's slue-foot, not slew-foot, but I could be wrong.
I am conscious of the fact that there is really no "right" or "wrong" in spelling - only usage. But on this side of the pond, I have only come across "slew-footed" (and it isn't a common saying here, anyway.) "Slew" is used to mean, "at an angle to the true direction" - e.g., the car was slewed across the road after it skidded.
"Slewed" is also a slang term for drunk.
(This is quite apart from its meaning as the past of "slay", of course.)
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