Flight of the Heron read-along: Part II chapters 1-2

[regshoe]

Charlie is my darling, the Young Chevalier...

Flight of the Heron (under the title The Jacobite Trilogy) is doing very well in Yuletide sign-ups—3 requests and 4 offers at present :D

Next week we'll read the second half of Part II, chapters 3 and 4.

Comments

[ethelmay]

I thought "shit" or "sod."

[luzula]

I looked up the origin of 'sod', and wow, I didn't know it was originally short for 'sodomite'! According to the OED, the earliest use is from 1814, but there are still examples of it used that way in the 20th century. And then later in the 19th century it also became 'a general term of abuse or contempt for a person (originally a man), esp. someone irritating, difficult, or troublesome', which is pretty much what I thought it meant, though it's not a word in my active vocabulary.

[ethelmay]

The OED's earliest use isn't necessarily the earliest there is, just the earliest the definition-writers were able to find - they are always on the lookout for earlier ones. One difficulty that occurs to me is that there may have been some overlap with "sot" (for which there are far earlier attestations), which could mean a foolish fellow as well as a drunken one. But I think there's a definite implication that they can't spell it out, because it's rude, which does argue for something more like "shit" or "sod" than like "spy." However well "spy" fits otherwise (and in fact I do think it's one of the most likely possibilities), I wouldn't have thought it would be so unmentionable an insult. And I like the idea of Broster working in a glancing reference to sodomy without saying so.