Shivs, Kazzana and code 4
LETTERS
From Kennedy Wells, Donald S. Connery, Asher Winegarten, Michael Ivens, Giles Play- fair, Hama ton Crag, Claude Pugh, F. E. Wilkins, Catherine Cowell, I. F. Freeman.
Sir: I can translate for Randolph Churchill some of the argot he found incomprehensible in The Death of a President (SPECTATOR, 21 Apr) butt some of it remains incomprehensible even after translation: Shivs'=`knives' (criminal derivation); 'running a broken field'=`changing direction frequently to avoid would-be tacklers.' This is an American foot- ball term, but seems to have been used inaccurately in this context; gerritory'=almost certainly lob' as Mr Churchill guesses-, `mileage=generally 'pro- ductive result'; 'the old Kazz_azza'=--`arse' but looks like a misspelling of a Yiddish slang word; 'code 4 hair'=unknown to me. Could it derive from a television makeup man's argot?; 'benched'='re- moved from active participation because of in- competence or incapacity' (American baseball and football term); 'parchisi board'=presumably a reference to the game 'parchesi';`pols'='politicians' as Mr Churchill guesses, and particulaily profes- sional political organisers rather than candidates; 'shuck'='discard' and originally meant to remove the outer, inedible, covering of an ear of maize; 'to saddle with'="to force by trickery or bullying anything unwanted on to a reluctant recipient.'
This leaves 'a stentorian roll of snare drums' which is as bad in American as in English, and 'They had already made their first pitch to Yarborough, and they had struck out.' This one is an American baseball expression, but it makes as little sense as it would to say 'They had bowled their first ball to Yarborough and they bad been stumped.'
Incidentally, an even more colorful term for 'monologophobia' is 'the elongated yellow fruit (banana) style of writing' and it was, I think, coined by a Boston newspaper editor Kennedy Wells 20 Garrick Gardens, West Molesey, Surrey
Previous page
