2016年11月17日木曜日

Abso-bloomin-lutely in "My Fair Lady" Affixation

Another article from my favourite movie "My Fair Lady"

Eliza is a common flower girl, her life is far from grand, but with her Covent Garden fellows, giving herself airs and graces, she imagines her ideal life singing "Wouldn't it be Loverly?"


All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from this cold night air
With one enormous chair
Aow, wouldn't it be loverly?

Oh so loverly sitting
Absobloominlutely still
I would never budge 'till spring
Crept over me winder sill


Eliza dreams of a modest decent life like a lady, but she uses a word that a lady would not use - absobloominlutely.

This word is now Googlable, but it is not in the English dictionary I have around me. It is a variation of "absolutely" with the word "blooming" inserted. You could say that "blooming" is an infix intensifying the meaning "absolutely".

For Eliza, the word "blooming" is a casual intensifier but I presume it was quite a shocking swear word in the early 20th century. Later in the movie, Eliza gets too excited watching a horse race and shouts,
"Move your BLOOMIN' ARSE!!"
All the upper class people at the race are aghast, some ladies fainting, at her words.

blooming : a mild swear word, used to emphasize a comment or a statement, especially an angry one. (OED)

100 years later, the word has become mild. Once shocking, but now not so, so people come up with a new expression that can replace it, and also apply the same rule in forming new words - absof*ckinlutely.

Now, I say that word is shocking. I would not dare use it, cannot even write the whole word. (However, you can hear it used in the American drama, "Sex and the City")

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