Wednesday 20 July 2011

Poop-Noddy



A poop-noddy is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as:

Sexual intercourse (rare)

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I'm planning never to have sex again, it's pure poop-noddies from here on in. However, the origin of the word is rather curious. The OED refers you to noddypoop and noddypoop is simply a synonym for noddypoll.

Now a noddy is a fool and a poll is a head. That's why you have poll tax (a tax per head) poleaxe (an axe used for chopping heads) and tadpole (toad-head). So what has any of this got to do with sex?

Well, there's a sort of clue in Shakespeare's Pericles. There's a scene where two people who run a brothel are discussing how drab and diseased their prostitutes are:

Pandar: Thou sayest true; they're too unwholesome, o' conscience. The poor Transylvanian is dead, that lay with the little baggage.


BOULT: Ay, she quickly pooped him; she made him roast-meat for worms. But I'll go search the market.

You've definitely got a sexual context here, but poop seems to mean gave him syphilis, rather than sex. So I'm going to take a guess that poop-noddy isn't sex exactly, that it is, in fact, the act of cuckolding somebody. So if you have sex with somebody's wife you are pooping her noddy of a husband.

I could be wrong though. It could be to do with poop decks, which are owned by bad DJs.

Supply your own caption.

P.S. Why do elephants have big ears?
Because Noddy won't pay the ransom.

8 comments:

  1. The Antipodean, wondering about the whole noddy / fool / Inky Fool connection,20 July 2011 at 14:27

    What about pooped as in tired? worn out? or is that more recent?

    It could also be much more primal, as in, she processed him, made him roast meat for worms...

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  2. The Antipodean, wondering if 'rare' is part of the condition,20 July 2011 at 15:04

    Can it be verbed? You seem to be using it as a noun.

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  3. 'Pooped' is a naval term for a ship being swamped by a wave breaking over the transom and flooding the poop deck; it was often fatal for sailing ships that did not have time to turn and face a storm.

    Now I think of it, 'transom' would itself be a good subject for examination. How did it change from the flat stern of a sailing ship to a term for a small window over a door?

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    Replies
    1. I would think in the case of transom it would be a question of angles. It isn't usually totally flat, it is typically angled, the top edge being closer to the approaching wave than the bottom. the wave hits the transom and transfers energy downwards, lifting the stern above the wave instead of pushing it sideways or under (which would result in the ship either being pooped or foundering).

      A transom window is also angled, opening from the top, as if it opened from the bottom it would be more difficult for the air near the ceiling to pass through, the intended purpose.

      My .02

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  4. I wonder, in this context of "poop", how "nincompoop" would be related, if at all?

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  5. I'm a Brit living in the Flemish region of Belgium. In Flemish Dutch the verb "poepen" - which is pronounced as poop/en would be in English - is in common use and means "to have sex". Interestingly this is one of the few words with a radically different meaning in our homolinguistic neighbour to the North ... in Netherland's Dutch, "poepen" means "to defecate"! (c.f. "fag" and "rubber" meanings either side of the Pond)

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  6. There seems to be at lot of pooping going on in the lower regions. "Poppe" (with a short closed "o") means "to have sex" in my native German dialect of Cologne, whereas "pupsen" (pronounced "poopsn") means "to break wind".

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  7. The American author John Green claims that his grandmother used to refer to any sort of amourous activity as 'swoodlypooping,' which is both pleasing and potentially relevant.

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