आज का शब्द / آج كا شبد / ਅੱਜ ਦਾ ਸ਼ਬਦ

[muckefuck]

गांड़ / گانڙ gaaMR "arse, buttocks" (< Sanskrit गण्डः gaNDah "cheek"; cf. Panjabi ਗੰਡ gaND "idem.")

This is a vulgarity used liberally in the modern Mumbai crime novel I'm reading, so I was more than a little surprised to find not only it in Platts but also a variety of idioms incorporating it. For instance, the worrying गांड़ फटना gaaMR phaaRnaa (lit. "arse tearing") "get into a funk, ge frightened, come under pressure" and the puzzling गांड़-गलत gaaMR galat (lit. "arse-error") "senseless, stupefied". Of course, more literal expressions were there as well, e.g. गांड़मराओ gaaMR-maraao (lit. "arse-strikee") "catamite". (As I told monshu, best not to think too deeply about what Victorian Englishmen would need such vocabulary for.)

More recent idioms incorporating the word include गांड़ मत्ती gaaMR mastee (lit. "arse intoxication") which seems to mean something along the lines of "screwing around" and गांड़ चौड़ी करके घूमना gasaMR chauRee karke ghoomnaa (a vulgar twist on लम्बी चौड़ी हांकना lambee chauRee haMkaa "boast"). But by far the most common derivative in modern use seems to be गांडू gaaNDoo [note the lack of lenition] which originally meant "sodomite" and is now a general term of a abuse, particularly for a weak or timorous man.

Strangely, the word गांड़ isn't in Shabdkosh, but a term of similar meaning is गुदा / گدا / ਗੁਦਾ gudaa "anus" which appears in such phrases as गुदा द्वार / ਗੁਦਾ-ਦੁਆਰ gudaa dwaar "arsehole" (द्वार dwaar "door, entryway") and गुदा मैथुन gudaa maithun "anal sex".

Comments

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

It took me a while to read "arse-strikee" correctly, after you'd thrown Victorian Englishmen into my head. Now I'm delighted by the translation. Even though it reminds me of my pet peeve regarding the American English terms "standee" and "retiree."

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

What's your beef with ergativity?

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

The problem is my own ignorance: like most native speakers I acquired English in a haphazard way. I was familiar with the transitive use of -ee but not the intransitive (which I had never encountered before coming to America, and which I didn't really get until just now). As a result, I always read standee and retiree as transitive, making the first bizarre and the second sadly often true. Do you know of a handy rule for deciding when to designate the subject with -er and when to use -ee? Should Bush have described himself as the decidee, I wonder?

Although I often make an arse of myself here, I usually end up benefiting from the experience. I crave yr indulgence.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I haven't really attempted to analyse the usage of -ee as a noun formant, but looking at these two it seems to be that thematic relations are trumping syntactic considerations like transitivity.

"Standing" is not a particularly active activity. In some languages, the corresponding verbal expression is formally stative (e.g. French être debout lit. "be upright") or at least more stative than other intransitives (e.g. German ist gestanden "stood" vs. hat sich gelehnt "leaned"). So a standing person is kind of on the borderline between agent (someone who performs an action) and experiencer (someone who receives a sensation).

-er is a prototypical an agent suffix whereas -ee is primarily associated with patients and experiencers. So the less "agent-like" the agent, the more likely the use of a prototypically patient suffix. You can get some idea of how active certain verbs are perceived to be by noting what sorts of constructions they generally appear in. If you are in work, you are described as "working" and what you are is a "worker". But if you have gone into retirement, you are described as "retired" and what you are is a "retiree". Similarly, someone who devotes themselves to a guru is described as "devoted", not "devoting" and, consequently, a "devotee", not a *devoter.

"Stand" is in a more nebulous area than either of these two examples, so it's not surprising we have variation on the order of "standee" vs. "bystander". "Decide" isn't, since the idea of volition (a primary characteristic of the prototypical agent) is so central. This is why *decidee doesn't work.

(I'm trying to test this working hypothesis with other weakly active intransitive verbs and having trouble coming up with candidates. Any suggestions?)

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

FWIW Wikipedia confirms my UK/US distinction, and offers "escapee," which seems highly odd as a not-very-active action.

I don't recall ever hearing "escapee" in England but then, I've been away for so long that, for all I know, "burglarized" might be common there now.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on whether you view "escaping" consisting more of deliberately avoiding (active) or just not getting caught (stative). Participially, someone would only be described as "escaping" during the actual moment of a jailbreak; otherwise, they are "escaped". (Note the parallel to retire.)

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I see this being used adjectivally, as in "he is an escaped prisoner," but I don't think I've ever come across "they are escaped" as a participle, only "they have escaped" - sounds archaic to me.

...King James Bible, acts 28:1: "And when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called Melita" rendered "And when they had escaped, then they knew that the isle was called Melita" in Webster's Bible. Not sure what to think.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Um...whether it's used predicatively or attributively, it's a participle either way. My point was "escaped prisoner" but ?"escaping prisoner"? Given that -ee is originally derived from a past participial form, this may be significant. Again, consider:

*devoting person -- devoted person -- devotee, *devoter
?retiring person -- retired person -- retiree, *retirer
?escaping person -- escaped person -- escapee, ?escaper
standing person -- *standed person -- standee, ?stander

Looking at that, now I'm wondering to what expect aspect is involved. There's a certain habitual aspect to -er that isn't necessarily present in -ee. For instance, a runner isn't someone who ran once, but someone who runs regularly (generally as a sport). "Escaper" would seem to imply someone who escapes regularly, not someone who has attempted it once. This would help explain the participle distribution, since the present participle is used for ongoing events whereas the past participle indicates completed events (and the states arising from them).

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I still contend that it would be better to write "no standing" than "no standees" on buses.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

"Better" how?

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

well, I've raised this a few times in different groups, usually over a drink, and I've always met a consensus - people either sympathized (saying variations on "it's like the people have been stood there, like mannequins") or goggled (if they haven't come across the usage). Sadly I lack the resources to do a proper survey. It seems to me, though, that "no standing" would avoid any ambiguity.

On your activity index, I'd say that while intransitive "stand" isn't very active, transitive "stand" is more so. "Sit," "crouch" and "lie" seem like obvious companions on the activity index. "Sleep" strikes me as a very strange case. How about "drift?"

I guess I never questioned "devotee" because I imagined some implicit agent doing the devoting (and now I'm wondering how you describe the person who devotes an offering). "Retiree" still brings me up short because the sample sentence for retire that comes up in my brain is "I've retired," or "shall we retire?" Although I've never thought about it before, I now see that "he's retired" is ambiguous: he has or he is?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I tried some of those, with mixed results. "Sitter" is short for "babysitter" (typically a very active occupation!) and "sittee" just sounds to me like a mispronunciation of "settee". *"Liee" is just terrible; "lier" invites confusion with "liar" except in compounds like "outlier". "Croucher" and "crouchee" both work IMD, the first with a more active implication (i.e. I'd be more likely to use it for someone waiting in ambush). "Drifter" is established in the language, but with a metaphorical meaning; I'd be apt to use "driftee" for someone literally adrift in the sea.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about whether this is just me resisting American English again, after I thought I'd reached acceptance, but I still think "no standing" is better, because, like "no smoking," "no spitting" or "give up this seat to an elderly or disabled person," it directly addresses the passenger with a command, while "no standees" is presumably short for "there should be no standees riding on this bus," a normative comment about the bus, and therefore rather indirect. Also, standees is less likely to be ina foreigner's phrasebook.

गांड़मराओ gaaMR-maraao (lit. "arse-strikee") "catamite"

[donncha22.livejournal.com]

Maybe it has a nominal use as well, but this term of abuse is primarily a causative imperative meaning "Get fucked in the ass!" (lit. "get your butthole beaten"). "Maraao" is the familiar imperative of the verb "maraanaa", which is part way along the causative chain that begins with "marnaa".

marnaa = to die
maarnaa = to cause to die, to beat
maraanaa = to cause to beat
marvaanaa = to cause someone else to beat

The noun "gaaMR" is probably a dialect variant of "gaRhaa" = hole, pit, cavity.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Platts actually derives गढ़ा directly from a cognate of Sanskrit गर्त garta "hole, cave" by means of Prakit गड्डअओ gaDDao. Seems a lot more plausible to me than गण्डः gaNDah spontaneously developing a non-nasalised, aspirated variant. Or can you think of parallels?