‘Gammon’ is added to Collins Dictionary as word of the year (telegraph.co.uk).
But indeed, we are not talking Sunday lunch here, or perhaps we are being that the comforting familiarity of that Lil’ English ritual is doubtlessly greatly missed by whom its use describes:
Collins Dictionary has named ‘gammon’ as one of its words of the year for 2018, but defining it as “a term of abuse directed at the most reactionary pro-Brexit supporters”.
With it generally used to:
…describe white men of a certain age who become pink in the face when working themselves into a rage about the European Union.
Alas, being in formally prime Estuary Essex UKipper territory our block has its share, although they are dwindling and not hanging around the front doors doing patriotic duty and great favours for the NHS with copious drinking of pale ale and puffing through a pack of Rothmans while giving supercilious appraisal of all entering, likely due to the fact that the cadre of Polish and Romainian white van man greatly outnumber them and whose wives and children have taken over the play park, thus causing them to mutter and get furiously “pink” faced while penning Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells (oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com) comments in news article comments behind locked door of their flat instead.
But its origins as a pejorative term came a lot before Brexit, indeed being a product of part of British literary greatness:
Although it has become more common since the Referendum, the term was used in 1838 by Charles Dickens to describe a pompous MP named Mr Gregsbury in Nicholas Nickleby.
But the epithet’s adoption has not proved a popular with some besides those with indignant belief in the impending arrival of Empire 2.0 and return to easily visible in face emotion:
‘Gammon’ is a playground insult, not something to be celebrated (theguardian.com).
Calling people gammons invokes the image of an emotionally charged Brexit-voting contingent, who don’t think with their heads. It reeks of intellectual snobbery. Mocking people for having feelings. They are the pigs, we are the people—the people who deserve a people’s vote. It’s that old idea of the feckless masses, who need to be governed by an intellectual elite who really knows what’s best for them…
True, but then again I’m sure many will attest that “playground insult” and a look of disapproval most often comes of late from the “emotionally charged curmudgeonly Brexit-voting contingent”—except when having to ask to have granny-porn that has mysterious hijacked their new fangled smartphone removed (Latest Picks 30th Nov. 2013).
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