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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where are you getting it's derogatory? It wasn't stated or implied in the article.
The phrase "Well, that went south really quickly" tends to mean a situation got really bad. Implying that south is bad.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where are you getting it's derogatory? It wasn't stated or implied in the article.
The phrase "Well, that went south really quickly" tends to mean a situation got really bad. Implying that south is bad.
I'm glad this expression won out, instead of the briefly popular but terribly clumsy "antipodean-gripper." /bs
This post must be related to the recent "How do you draw a circle?" [1] article. They used the term "southpaw", which I had never heard before. EDIT: Strange, I definitely read the word "southpaw" somewhere in the last few days, and I remember learning that it was a term for left-handed people. Now I can't find it anywhere in the circle article, the HN comments [2], or the Reddit thread [3]. Little things like this r…
My daughter was doing geometry homework that had a question about the direction of a baseball field and claimed they are often oriented so that the batter faces east.
I wanted to verify the assertion, and Google led me to this article. I was familiar with "southpaw" but always thought it was a boxing term and didn't know its etymology.
Possibly related: why does "going south" mean degrading, spoiling, breaking down ... The "paws" in "southpaws" clarifies that it is a derogatory term, suggesting that the left-handed are clumsy. Could it be that the sense of south in "going south" is a back formation from southpaw? Etymonline documents "going south" as meaning "vanish, abscond", tracing it to 1920's America: "American English, probably from mid-19c.…
Historically, the left side, and subsequently left-handedness, was considered negative in many cultures. The Latin word sinistra originally meant "left" but took on meanings of "evil" or "unlucky" by the Classical Latin era, and this double meaning survives in European derivatives of Latin, and in the English word "sinister".
Meanings gradually developed from use of these terms in the ancient languages. In many modern European languages, including English, the word for the direction "right" also means "correct" or "proper", and also stands for authority and justice. In most Slavic languages the root prav is used in words carrying meanings of correctness or justice.
Wikipedia also has a fun article here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-handed_peopl...
I'm glad this expression won out, instead of the briefly popular but terribly clumsy "antipodean-gripper." /bs
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The phrase "Well, that went south really quickly" tends to mean a situation got really bad. Implying that south is bad.
Perhaps related: the Latin words for left and right are sinister and dexter, which obviously have connotations...
Even today some people react with surprise when they see me writing with my left hand. We're a sizeable minority (of ten percent) — it's far from rare — but amongst older generations it sometimes just comes across as weird (I'm in my thirties myself).
Possibly related: why does "going south" mean degrading, spoiling, breaking down ... The "paws" in "southpaws" clarifies that it is a derogatory term, suggesting that the left-handed are clumsy. Could it be that the sense of south in "going south" is a back formation from southpaw? Etymonline documents "going south" as meaning "vanish, abscond", tracing it to 1920's America: "American English, probably from mid-19c.…