ryano's New Writeups

Gerry Adams (person)

2002-04-22T15:42:36Z

Irish nationalist leader, born 1948

Biography in brief

Born in Belfast on October 6th, 1948, into a working class family with a long history of involvement in Irish republicanism and nationalism. Worked as a bartender as a young man, but has apparently devoted himself full-time to the republican cause since joining Sinn Féin and/or the IRA at the outset of the current troubles in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s. When the republican movement split in the early 1970s, he sided with the "Provisional" wing, who largely eclipsed the "Official" wing over the course of the conflict. Interned without trial by the Northern Ireland government several times during the 1970s. Elected vice-President of Provisional Sinn Féin in 1978, and has been its President since 1983. Survived attempted assassination in 1984, sustaining serious wounds. Elected to the British Parliament in 1982, although in line with Sinn Féin's abstentionist…

15 to 1 (thing)

2002-04-03T15:36:31Z

15 to 1, or Fifteen to One, is an outrageously no-nonsense quiz show, broadcast every weekday on the UK's Channel 4 and presented by dapper gent William G. Stewart. Its low-chat, high-questions format has led to its reputation among quiz buffs as one of the most prestigious TV quizzes. This reputation may also have something to do with the fact that the only prize on offer is a trophy (albeit a valuable one), which is awarded only to one contestant per series. Although the questions are not particularly difficult or obscure, they cover a very wide range of topics, so a great breadth of knowledge is normally required in order to win. The show is broadcast at 3.45pm daily, just before Countdown, making it a favourite of students, the retired and the unemployed.

The show's name derives from the fact that the 15 contestants who start each episode are gradually whittled down through a series of rounds until only one remains. Depending on the winner's final score, he or she may…

eejit (person)

2001-11-22T15:06:19Z

According to the Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the word "eejit" is not unparliamentary language, and members of the Assembly are thus entitled to sling this insult around with impunity. This is probably just as well, as any restriction on the use of the word would surely cause the business of the house to grind to a halt. Eejit is a wonderfully all-purpose insult, which depending on the context can imply anything from great fondness to utter contempt.

The matter arose in the Northern Ireland assembly after Mr Billy Hutchinson of the PUP made the comment,

You'll never find me hiding behind anyone, you eejit, shut up.

The Speaker, John Alderdice, was asked to rule on whether this constituted unparliamentary language. In ruling that it was not, he turned up the following amusing precedent:

In the 1982-86 Assembly a Member raised a point of order and asked the Speaker at the time, Mr (later Sir) James Kilfedder,

…

Biffo (person)

2001-11-22T13:56:05Z

Biffo is an insulting Irish acronym:

Big Ignorant Fucker From Offaly

Offaly being a county in the Irish midlands, and as such pretty nondescript. As this is a pretty specific insult, it is not really that commonly used. It is widely used, however, to refer to Brian Cowen, the current Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Irish government. Mr Cowen is one of Ireland's most senior politicians, who can be seen strutting the world stage in company with the likes of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and Romano Prodi, so you might expect that the Irish people would afford him the respect due to such an eminent personage. Mr Cowen, however, is saddled with the appearance and speech of a corpulent unschooled individual from the deepest midlands, and as such the appellation "Biffo" has stuck to him.

A related acronym is Buffalo: Big Ugly Fucker From Around Laois/Offaly. This is even more rarely used, despite its potential application to the denizens of more than one midlands county.

Cute (idea)

2001-11-22T12:13:37Z

In most parts of the world, the sense of the word "cute" given by Webster -- "Clever; sharp; shrewd; ingenious; cunning." -- has been replaced by the more common sense of "attractive, especially by means of smallness or prettiness or quaintness". However, the original sense of the word is still current in Ireland, where it is quite common to refer to a cunning, devious person as "cute".

In this usage, cute indicates that the person referred to is smarter than he/she looks, knows more than he/she is letting on, etc. It is a very useful word, as it indicates both admiration and distrust. By calling someone cute, you are paying his/her intelligence a compliment, while indicating a wariness as to his/her motives. For this reason, you would rarely call someone cute to his/her face, except in jest.

This usage of cute is commonly teamed with the an Irish pronunciation of the word whore: hoor or whoor. When pronounced in this way, the…

off of (idea)

2001-11-14T14:37:37Z

I very much wanted to believe that off of, rather than being a "stupid" usage, was in fact the correct formal usage of "off" in certain contexts, such as the one mentioned by FlameBoy above ("It fell off of a passing car"). My suspicions seemed to be confirmed by a visit to the Webster 1913 definition for off, which give many adjectival senses of "off" but only one sense in which off is a preposition:

Off, prep.

Not on; away from; as, to be off one's legs or off the bed; two miles off the shore.

This sense is not the same as that described by FlameBoy, as it indicates position rather than motion. It would certainly sound wrong to say "the boat lay two miles off of the shore", but I reckoned that "the man fell off of the boat" actually sounds correct. My rationale was that "off" could only be used as a preposition in one specific sense, in describing the position of the subject. In every…