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Word of the Week: Jede Woche ein neues Rätsel über Bedeutung, Verwendung und Herkunft eines englischen Worts.
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It is Pub Quiz night at the Old Bull and Ferret, a country inn somewhere in southern England. Two teams battling it out in a test of knowledge – sometimes useful but mainly useless. The Quizmaster raises a card and reads:
“What is meant by the following phrase?
She’s trousered it!”
Immediately The Man Who Knows Everything presses his team’s buzzer. The Quizmaster sighs deeply and invites him (not for the first time that evening) to give his answer:
a) “Trouser!” Originally, of course, a French word, pronounced “troo-zay”. I’m sure I needn’t tell you that the French “trou” translates as “hole” and as any fool knows a “trouser”, or pair of trousers; a rather curious Anglicism, after all no man wears two “trousers” at one and the same time; has two of them – one for each leg. Now, the French “trouser” was originally also a verb, meaning to “hole” something or, more correctly, put something in a hole. As this is the sports round I can only assume the quotation refers to that most popular of recreations amongst stockbrokers and the criminal classes – golf!
b) Oh dear! How the English take pleasure in mangling foreign languages. As I assume everyone here in this fine establishment is already aware, the French “trousseau”, pronounced “troo-so”, was welcomed into the English language upon William the Bastard’s, sorry, Conqueror’s rather rude entry into the British cultural scene. A woman on the verge of marriage will bring her “trouser”, or better “trousseau”, with her into that fine and noble institution. It basically means all her worldly goods. Today that probably amounts to an Ikea dinner service and an mp3 player!
c) “She” did you say? Unusual in this context. Still, nothing should surprise me in this day and age. The transitive verb “to trouser” is another example of the fad of using nouns or, heaven forbid, adjectives as verbs. This particular specimen refers to the act of putting cash into one’s “trouser” pocket, the idea being that this cash has been earned in some way. It does, however, imply that the earning of the cash was not done in a particularly legal way. Hence my shock at hearing the female personal pronoun in this context. Call me old-fashioned if you will.
Here is the correct answer.
The correct answer is C. “To trouser” means, literally, to put money into one’s trouser pocket. Figuratively, it means to take, earn or even steal money in a surreptitious way. |
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This is an informal British English verb. As The Man Who Knows Everything correctly points out, it is taken from the noun and this is just one of many examples of this. Further examples are listed below. “To trouser” does indeed mean to take or earn money, but implies (though this is not necessarily always the case) certain irregularities, e.g. a bribe may be “trousered”. To understand the context of this verb fully, one must keep in mind that the average British man deposits his change (coins) directly into his trouser pocket and not, as is the case in Germany and other countries in mainland Europe, into a wallet. Banknotes, on the other hand, are kept in a wallet.
A past WoW was “to large” something. Here the adjective “large” has been converted into a verb. Other examples of such adjectives or nouns are:
• to pocket (meaning exactly the same as “to trouser”)
• to king (to win a competition, comes from chess)
• to Shatner (to speak rather than sing song lyrics – refers to the actor William Shatner)
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a) “Where’s my change?”
“Your son’s trousered it!”
b) “She’s given you too much change. Quick! Trouser it!”
c) The man picked the unmarked brown envelope out of the rubbish bin and trousered it. |
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