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Pooh-Bah
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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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veteran
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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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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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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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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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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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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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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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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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Carpal Tunnel
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