In a previous blog, I asked if anyone out there knew what Sarspididious meant, as someone had sent the word to me, but I couldn’t find any reference to it. Not even when I Googled it! However when I posted this blog my son also googled it about a week later and this is his findings: “Google only comes up with 3 results - one of which is yours, the other a dead end. The third is a forum where there was no answer but they think it might be a made up Aussie word from the 60's. Here is the link http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1316820”.
So unless someone comes up with something further, I am going to leave it as a Made up Aussie word from the 1960’s with the rough meaning of: “being deliberately silly or stupid.” So until or unless I find out more on the subject, that is where I will leave it for now. Thanks for your participation.
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18 comments:
I recently showed the word sarspididious to my seven year old grand daughter and asked her to read it. Her mother challenged me to the meaning and authenticity of the word so I looked it up in the MacQuarrie dictionary only to find it absent.
I first heard the word from my father when I was about eight to ten years old and was being deliberately foolish. My father grew up in the town of Trayning in our eastern wheatbelt where his father was a bank manager and his mother was a nurse.
i used the term to describe the actions of an acquaintance during a night out in the Nungarin hotel which is some 50 kilometres from Trayning during the 1970s and it brought the general conversation in the bar to a halt. Several old timers told me that they had not heard the term for a number of years. I think that they were pleased to hear it. I know they were because the beers flowed freely after that remark.
A few years ago I recall someone referring to the MacQuarrie Dictionary as being remiss in not containing the word as it was a word that was used in that part of the wheatbelt during the depression years.
It's a word that I hold dear to me and I'll use it when required eg on political issues where some one is being obtuse.
Thanks for your comment Howard. It is obviuosly of an older generation than now.
This is a word my late father used back in the 40s-50s in Geelong, Victoria. Silly, cranky. I always thought he made it up ... until I Googled today.
Graeme
This is a word my late father used back in the 40s-50s in Geelong, Victoria. Silly, cranky. I always thought he made it up ... until I Googled today.
Graeme
Thanks Graeme, It now seems older than first believed and also not just confined to WA as originally believed.
My mum just used this word to describe somebody on TV. I have never heard it before! I asked her about it, then googled it and this blog was the best information I found. Very strange! My mum is in her mid 50's (from northern, rural Victoria and still living there) and heard it from her parents in the 50's and 60's and as far as she was concerned it was a commonly used phrase - apparently not! She was more surprised than I was that we weren't able find it anywhere. Surprised Macquarie hasn't picked it up. Weird :/
Thanks for the input MKN. Obviously a "word" from a forgotten era/time.
This is a word my wife and I are familiar with from on our childhoods. The meaning as understood by us is: "smart arse" behaviour, difficult to get on with but with a sense of humour attached, cheeky to the extreme.
Thanks Darrell. Greatly appreciate your understanding of the word. Which while apparently known widely, its actual origins is not wildly known. Thanks again for your addition too our present knowledge of Sarspadidious.
Thanks Darrell. Greatly appreciate your understanding of the word. Which while apparently known widely, its actual origins is not wildly known. Thanks again for your addition too our present knowledge of Sarspadidious.
Just to add that the word is spelt sarspididious
Thanks for that information Barbara. And for the spellingcorrection. Now my freind and all the others who knew or used it have a definitive answer. Many, many thanks for that.
My mother now 90, said just now that she was hearing her mother use the word when she was 7 (1936) in Wellington New Zealand. It was a word commonly used in her mothers wider family, so one could assume that it could have come from England as the family immigrated in the late 1800's.
Yep. Definitely a word - Australian modern; might have been made up by one of the popular comedians, I think Roy Rene. It's still used.
Yes, you could add it was heard from a New Zealander (Dobbsy) in rural NSW (Galong) in the late ‘60s. Meaning, something that irked him, irksome. (From my uncle)
I coined the word probably back in 1997 whilst living in West Auckland New Zealand, although spelt it saspididious without the r. Hadnt heard it prior, just made it up. Tried to submit it to oxford dictionary, rebutted swiftly. I used it to mean all things of nonsense. Seems ive heard it prior to my conception of it.
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