What gets your goat on BE?
Aug 25th 2009, 4:05 pm
#61
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Sep 2003
Location: Tillsonburg ON
Posts: 1,001
Re: What gets your goat on BE?
Agreed
Absolutely
People who forget that this is a forum for people whose common link is that they are or are hoping to are expats and not members of MENSA.
The fact that there is so much lack of patience for new members, the older ones appear to have forgotten what it is like to be new.
How spiteful this place gets at times despite the fact that this forum is allegedly for adults.
Despite all of that I still look in most days.............
[Grabs coat and makes a run for the door]
Aug 25th 2009, 4:41 pm
#65
Forum Regular
Joined: Jun 2009
Posts: 208
Re: What gets your goat on BE?
l can only speak from experience being a newbie on here.....but you guys are fabulous....a wealth of information.
A BIG THANKYOU TO YOU ALL
Kind Regards
xxElainexx
A BIG THANKYOU TO YOU ALL
Kind Regards
xxElainexx
Aug 25th 2009, 4:51 pm
#67
Logical & Hot Stuff
Joined: Nov 2007
Location: Ontario's Armpit
Posts: 19,815
Aug 25th 2009, 5:56 pm
#68
half a century
Joined: Mar 2008
Location: Sarf Lundun to East Van :)
Posts: 10,222
Re: What gets your goat on BE?
Meaning: Make you annoyed or angry.
Origin:The dictionary definition of goat is 'a ruminant quadruped of the genus Capra'. What's that got to do with being angry? Given the meaning of 'get your goat', we might expect to find goat as a slang term meaning anger or annoyance. That meaning is recorded in the US book Life in Sing Sing, 1904, which goat is given as a slang term for anger. The phrase originated in the US and the first entry in print that I can find comes from a fanciful story about a burst water pipe that was printed in the US newspaper The Stevens Point Daily Journal, May 1909:"Wouldn't that get your goat? We'd been transferring the same water all night from the tub to the bowl and back again." The expression took a few years to cross the Atlantic. The first non-US citation isn't found until 1924 in the English author John Galsworthy's story White Monkey, and even there it is clearly seen as a recent innovation: "That had got the chairman's goat! - Got his goat? What expressions they used nowadays!" The following year, The Times printed a piece in memory of the then recently deceased Friedrich Baedeker. This included a side-swipe at American tourists and uses the phrase as a typical piece of Americana: "... goggled Americans whispering aloud, 'Wa-al Sadie, these durned three star things get my goat'!" A commonly repeated story which purports to explain the phrase's origin is that goats were placed with racehorses to keep them calm. When ne'er-do-wells who wanted the horse to race badly removed it, i.e. they 'got someone's goat', the horse became unsettled and ran badly. That's just the sort of tale that gets the folk etymology juices running. Let's just say that there's no evidence to support that story.
Origin:The dictionary definition of goat is 'a ruminant quadruped of the genus Capra'. What's that got to do with being angry? Given the meaning of 'get your goat', we might expect to find goat as a slang term meaning anger or annoyance. That meaning is recorded in the US book Life in Sing Sing, 1904, which goat is given as a slang term for anger. The phrase originated in the US and the first entry in print that I can find comes from a fanciful story about a burst water pipe that was printed in the US newspaper The Stevens Point Daily Journal, May 1909:"Wouldn't that get your goat? We'd been transferring the same water all night from the tub to the bowl and back again." The expression took a few years to cross the Atlantic. The first non-US citation isn't found until 1924 in the English author John Galsworthy's story White Monkey, and even there it is clearly seen as a recent innovation: "That had got the chairman's goat! - Got his goat? What expressions they used nowadays!" The following year, The Times printed a piece in memory of the then recently deceased Friedrich Baedeker. This included a side-swipe at American tourists and uses the phrase as a typical piece of Americana: "... goggled Americans whispering aloud, 'Wa-al Sadie, these durned three star things get my goat'!" A commonly repeated story which purports to explain the phrase's origin is that goats were placed with racehorses to keep them calm. When ne'er-do-wells who wanted the horse to race badly removed it, i.e. they 'got someone's goat', the horse became unsettled and ran badly. That's just the sort of tale that gets the folk etymology juices running. Let's just say that there's no evidence to support that story.
You trying to be funny now??!
Aug 25th 2009, 6:10 pm
#69
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Sep 2005
Location: Normandy, France and occassionally Nova Scotia!
Posts: 3,373
Aug 25th 2009, 6:14 pm
#70
half a century
Joined: Mar 2008
Location: Sarf Lundun to East Van :)
Posts: 10,222
Aug 25th 2009, 6:29 pm
#74
Swollen Member
Joined: Nov 2005
Location: Toronto (thank goodness)
Posts: 1,267
Re: What gets your goat on BE?
Aug 25th 2009, 6:29 pm
#75
half a century
Joined: Mar 2008
Location: Sarf Lundun to East Van :)
Posts: 10,222
