Friday 19 December 2008

What I've Learned Today

It's not oopsie daisy!

It's oops-a-daisy!

An exclamation made when encouraging a child to get up after a fall or when lifting a child into the air.

Actually there are a million ways to spell it and I wasn't far off... though I should spell it whoopsie daisy or whoops-a-daisy to get the correct meaning... in the context in which I use it:

An exclamation made after a stumble or other mistake. It is usually said by the perpetrator of the error and the saying out loud is a public acknowledgement.

Reading this made me realise although I have watched Notting Hill a million times, I've never watched it in English... I would have remembered Hugh Grant saying it and Julia Roberts remark:

"No one has said 'whoops-a-daisies' for fifty years and even then it was only little girls with blonde ringlets."

I remember the quote in German though... I wish I had watched the movie in English back in the day, mind you, I could have been using this phrase for years...

Also... the first known printed record of any form of the term is in Clough Robinson's The dialect of Leeds and its neighbourhood (1862). Awww, Leeds... it all comes full circle in the end, doesn't it? Brilliant!

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