Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: Gorgon

L'altro ieri guardavo "My new best friend " il nuovo orribile reality show
di Channel 4 .
Ad un cero punto il protagonista ha cominciato a "call names " l'amico .
Gli ha detto :Cunt, piece of shit , fuck , altri orribili epiteti che
inquesto momento non mi vengono in mente e  lo poi anche chiamato "gorgon" .
Ho portato indietro il nastro per vedere se avessi capito bene e sembra che
non mi sia sbagliato .
A qualcuno risulta che questa parola possa essere associata come orribile
insulto a quelle di cui sopra ?
Yours
Sal

insulto a quelle di cui sopra ?
"gorgon" e' un insulto, si'.
-- 
Adam Atkinson (
gh...@mistral.co.uk
)
"Let's catch that sick bird" he said, illegally.

 "gorgon" e' un insulto, si'.
< BUT ,
Is it as strong as the other ones ?
And why can't I find it in any of my slang dictionaries ?
Yours
Sal

And why can't I find it in any of my slang dictionaries ?
http://home.houston.rr.com/treynolds37/rasta.html
Cambridge:
a woman whose appearance and behaviour causes fear:
Our teacher is a real gorgon!
Merriam Webster:
2 : an ugly or repulsive woman
Oxford:
2 an ugly woman who behaves in a fierce and frightening way
But you said "l'amico" - a male - then I don't know what to say about
it. It seems to me like an Italian guy calling "megera"* a male
friend. ;)
In the first HP book Hagrid sais "Gallopin' Gorgons"  ;)
http://www.hp-lexicon.org/slang.html
 
Sebastiano
*I'd say 'trout' in British English and 'harridan' in American English
-- 
The pen is mightier than the sword... only if the
sword is very small and the pen is very sharp.

just to elicit the usual fake audience laughter
Yes, it could be. It's like me saying "megera" to a male after a lot
of "fanculo", though. Funny, I have to say. But I am not 100% sure
it's the same in English because I've never used or heard the word
gorgon used like that.
Sebastiano


 friend. ;)
Why not? After all, it was at the end of the list, so it could have been a
word that creates a sort of pre-planned contrast with the previous ones,
just to elicit the usual fake audience laughter
-- 
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 Sebastiano
And it is in fact the fake audience laughter that makes it appear so
funny. There's one such laughter every 5-7 seconds or so. Not even the
most hilarious comedians would dream of achieving that


most hilarious comedians would dream of achieving that
Now I got the point. A 5-7 second gap between the laughters is
something impossible to achieve. I, personally, do not like the fake
audience laughter so much. E.g., in Friends, what you hear is real
people laughing. In the Italian version the real laughs are missing
and there is this abysmal fake audience laughter. The difference is
astounding. Well, so I am told. I do not remember those fake laughs
and I do not watch Friends in Italian so I can't be sure.


 Sebastiano
you know something? I've never watched Friends in my whole life! I was
just guessing ;-), but the 5-7 seconds gap, and sometimes an even shorter
one, between one fake laugh and another is something you can experience
from most such soap operas.
Now, seriously, I think I've heard somehow-somewhere this kind of sequence
of words (of course not the same as those mentioned here), say nouns or
adjectives or even verbs I don't know, in which the actor obtains this
bizarre effect, that is he (or she) says something quite unexpected that
has basically nothing to do with what he's been saying until that moment,
and that itself creates the joke because it works as though he negated or
removed the seriousness of what had come before that word. It might sound
like a sort of self-irony, or something that cheats the audience by
creating an anxious mood of a certain duration and then stopping it all
and saying "it was just a joke".


and saying "it was just a joke".
It seems a sort of cheat, yes, and probably we can easily consider
this kind of behaviour as a trick. But the point is that it works,
that's all that matters.


 "Guiding Lights" with the laughs. ;)
Yeah, sitcom, that stuff. Now I can add into my personal vocabulary a more
accurate word for indicating the programmes that make use of that
extremely dismal and unfortunate tool which is the fake audience laughter.
When I hear those spasmodic and hysterical fake heartily laughs and
giggles which repeat themselves again and again in the same way no matter
how idiotic and miserable the starting joke was, I am pervaded by a
feeling of disheartenment and hopelessness.


feeling of disheartenment and hopelessness.
Yeah, I don't like 'em either. Someone would say "why bother? It's
nothing" but as George Jefferson said "Nothing? That ain't nothin!
That is something!". But he was talking about a tux. ;)
Sebastiano/we're movin' on up


 episode:"The Jeffersons was recorded in front of a studio audience".
Unless that studio audience had got so addicted with sitcoms with fake
laughters that it exactly knew when and how to laugh in order to resemble
one. That is, a fake fake laughter ;-)


one. That is, a fake fake laughter ;-)
ROTFL. That's really real.
Sebastiano


 Sebastiano
Please don't tell anyone. I'm working on a sitcom and if the sitcom
director finds out that I made even a single real person in the whole
universe laugh he will sack me without mercy. You know, sitcom directors
are really vicious guys!


are really vicious guys!
LOL
I won't talk, don't worry. Just in case you're interested, I do laugh
when I watch Friends, so you are not the first sitcom... ahem...
writer, scripter... worker, whatever, who make someone - a real
breathin' someone - laugh. Tell the director that, he might want to
give you a raise.


 L'altro ieri guardavo "My new best friend " il 
le gorgoni erano mostri della mitologia greca.
la piu' famosa era la medusa, mostro  che trasformava in pietra chiunque
la guardasse .
venne uccisa dall'eroe perseo.
gorgon e' la ccorrispondente parola inglese


 gorgon e' la ccorrispondente parola inglese
< That went without saying , mate .
   Elementary school in the sixties was the works .
Yours
Sal

 give you a raise.
I asked him. He raised my house to the ground.
