Duffers (was:Slytherin House again)

[richard_smedley]

No: HPFGUIDX 119312



--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at m...>
wrote: 
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" 
> <justcarol67 at y...> wrote:
> > 
> > Potioncat signed off with: 
> ... but would fit very well in 
> > > Hufflepuff and BTW, what is a duffer?
> > 
> > Carol responds:
> > Someone who duffs? Seriously, in American English, it means a 
> really
> > bad golfer and consequently a clumsy or inept person. I'm not sure
> > whether that's the British meaning or not, but I'm sure I'll be
> > corrected if it isn't.

> Potioncat:
> Yes, I can see it now, dictionaries at ten paces!
> 
> "An inept person" am I last the one on the list to get the joke that 
> it's "Hagrid" who makes the duffer comment?

It's very much pre-war English, and fits in with the
genre of the books (English boarding school tales), and
hence the vocabulary used by Rowling in the books (but 
not the films <shudder>).

In the first of the splendid ``Swallows and Amazons'' books 
by Arthur Ransome, John waits for permission to sail without
adult supervision, which arrives in the form of a telegram
worded: ``better drowned than duffers'' :-)

Perhaps this doesn't quite suggest to the casual reader that 
the word was generally used as a `soft' insult, and could be
used with some affection, cf CS LEWIS, ``The Voyage of the
Dawn Treader''

In modern British English duff simply means broken or non-
functional, or not up to the job. What would it mean across
the pond in Springfield, home of Duff beer?

 - Richard

--

"Britain and America are two nations
divided by language" - Oscar Wilde