[HPforGrownups] Re: UK vs. US

[Janette]

No: HPFGUIDX 170598

>
> Mike:
> Sorry I had to snip so much of your excellent post.
>
> I have also enjoyed the many new British expressions. I still haven't
> figured them all out. Right now, I don't know if I should or shouldn't
> be having a "shufti" after reading some parts of DH. No amount of
> context has been able to enlighten me as to the meaning of this slang.


montims:

In fact, to have a shufti means to have a look, and its origin is pretty
uniformly agreed to be military slang, brought back from the Middle East,
like dekko and others.  Google brings up a lot of explanations, such as:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-shu1.htm

SHUFTI

[Q] *From Nick Carrington, UK*: "What's the origin of *shufty*, meaning
look, as in *take a shufty*?"

[A] *Shufti* (another way of writing it, the one usually given in
dictionaries) is Arabic. In that language it means "have you seen?". It's a
bit of military slang, picked up by British servicemen formerly based in the
Middle East. The first recorded examples in print are from the Second World
War, suggesting that it may have originated among soldiers in the desert
campaign. However, Eric Partridge says that it actually started life with
Royal Air Force stations in that area about 1925, but that it had spread to
the Army by 1930. This seems probable, to judge from the extent of its use
in World War Two, and the number of compounds it spawned, none of which seem
to have survived the end of the War. Among them, Partridge mentions *
shuftiscope*, which had a number of senses, one of which he defines with
ponderous delicacy as "an instrument used by doctors for research in cases
of dysentery".
However, while I understand what American readers have written about
skirting boards, jumpers, and puddings, etc, I would point out that British
readers have read American books for years, and understood them...  Maybe we
get some things wrong, but I enjoy coming across words in strange contexts
and puzzling out their meanings.  We also, of course, watch American films
and understand what the protagonists are saying by context, if nothing
else...


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