About Fiddlesticks
Submitted as a comment by SK
That was a word permitted when we were children (as opposed to many others that were not) as an expression of frustration at some ridiculous situation.
I looked up its origin because seeing it in print made me laugh. Hadn’t heard it in ages. The only people I know who still use it are all English.
According to an etymological web site, he term seems to derive from the bows that are used to play violins. Those have been named in English since the 15th century – then as ‘fydylstyks’.
The word was appropriated to indicate absurdity in the 17th century.
Thomas Nashe used it that way in the play Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 1600:
“A fiddlesticke! ne’re tell me I am full of words.”
There’s nothing inherently funny about a violin bow. It seems that ‘fiddlestick’ was chosen just because it sounds like a comedy word, like ‘scuttlebutt’ (a cask of drinking water), ‘lickspittle’ (a sycophant) and ‘snollygoster’ (an unprincipled person).
In the same way the ‘I don’t give a fig’ was originally ‘I don’t give a fig’s end’, that is, it referred to something insignificant, ‘fiddlesticks’ was originally ‘fiddlestick’s end’, that is, it was a reference to something paltry, trifling and absurd.
Your note on fiddlesticks makes me think of my ol’ COB (Chieif of the Boat), who’d served on diesel boats and on into the nuclear submarine Navy. You would’ve expected the COB to be an old salt, and he was, whose language would’ve been as salty as his time in the sea, except it wasn’t. In the 4 years I served with him, not a swear word ever came out of his mouth. If the COB was angered about something, or what not, the most striking epithet you’d hear come from his mouth would be “bloody well…,” or some such innocuous phrase. Never heard him say fiddlesticks though, even when he was dressing me down for some infraction.
Ha!
Bloody was considered a very naughty word for a very long time. It’s always used as an intensifying adjective, as in “you know bloody well what I mean”. Still used mostly by men, heard often in the pub. Probably some women use it now. Gentlemen still wouldn’t use it in mixed company.
My dad used it when he was really cross with my brothers and was out of my mother’s earshot. Don’t know the origins of the word. Probably the Oxford Dictionary could tell us. It’s very colorful when used well!