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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (78062)	3/17/2000 5:34:00 PM
From: Dave Feldman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

More than you want to know, I'm sure, Mike, but from the Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word & Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson: "Revolutionary War soldiers liked to sing the Scottish song, "Maggie Lauder," the chorus of which chided a blatherskate, a gabby person full of nonsense or hot air. The song is a very old one, dating back to the 17th century, and the word blatherskate is older still, formed from bladder, an obsolete English word for an inflated pretentious man, a windbag, and a contemptuous use of the word skate, referring to the common food fish. "Why the skate was chosen for the humorous word isn't clear, perhaps because it was believed to inflate itself like a blowfish, or possibly just because it was common. In any case, `Maggie Lauder' made blatherskate popular in America and later, in the 19th century, when Americans invented their native word cheapskate, for a tightwad, they borrowed the skate from it. "This is a more roundabout explanation than the theory that the skate in cheapskate comes from a British slang word for chap, but it seems more logical, as skate in the sense of chap never had much currency in the U.S., except in the term good skate, meaning a good person." Gee, I think we should resuscitate the expression "blatherskate."