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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004Manhattan's sand
Yeah, not, for once, Jan Sand's Manhattan. I finally watched Scorsese's *Gangs of New York* last night.[1] Several times in the dialogue reference is made to having "sand", with the meaning of "guts"/"balls"/"bottle"/"backbone"/"right stuff". Where did it come from? And where did it go? (Yeah, I've looked it up -- mid-19C blah-blah, but no real clues as to its origin.) [1. I'd been putting it off, expecting to hate it and, being reluctant to face the prospect of having to hate a Martyfest -- I mean like I'm a guy actually quite liked *Kundun* f'crynouloud. Anyway, it was a magnificent mess; beautifully -- rather than fatally -- flawed. I'm confident, though, that the director's cut will reveal it to truly be the Great American Movie. Anyway, to the point: did RF duly rip the accents apart upon its release? If so I missed it. (FWIW, I thought DDL had considerably more sand taking on proto-New York than LdC did by tuning in and out of an off-the-boat half-brogue that any kid who'd spent 16 years in a reformatory would definitely have lost -- or, more accurately, law-ust -- aw-ull traces of.] -- Ross Howard > Yeah, not, for once, Jan Sand's Manhattan. > [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > Where did it come from? And where did it go? (Yeah, I've looked it up > -- mid-19C blah-blah, but no real clues as to its origin.) By analogy with 'grit' which antedates it by some 50 years selon OED -- John Dean Oxford De-frag to reply >> Yeah, not, for once, Jan Sand's Manhattan. >> [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] >> >By analogy with 'grit' which antedates it by some 50 years selon OED Has dirt or soil also ever been used with that meaning, AAMOI? And -- a wider question -- why was "earthiness" ever correlated with unrefined courage in the first place? (An Earth Mother thing? Or earthy rather than ethereal, with vile, base violence of the land of the living as opposed to the angelic peace of the Kingdom of Heaven?) -- Ross Howard > "John Dean" <john-dean@frag.lineone.net> wrought: >>> [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > > Has dirt or soil also ever been used with that meaning, AAMOI? ... IDU AAMOI. I suspect one can dig up quite a few Dustbowl era references where dirt, soil, earth, and so on are correlated with or overtly signify a certain toughness or inner strength. I'd bet Steinbeck did something like this.  SignatureGood luck and good sailing. s/v Kerry Deare of Barnegat http://kerrydeare.tripod.com > [1. I'd been putting it off, expecting to hate it and, being reluctant > to face the prospect of having to hate a Martyfest -- I mean like I'm [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > spent 16 years in a reformatory would definitely have lost -- or, more > accurately, law-ust -- aw-ull traces of.] Yeah, DDL's proto-NY accent *sounds* to me just like any sort of phony New York accent that an American or non-American might put on, with a few additional twists thrown in. It's been said that he had a Degreed Linguist as a dialect coach, OSLT, but it sounded fake to me all the same (particularly for palaeo-NY, as it sounded more post-WW2 than like the old early 20c NY accents of, say, Al "raddio, cherce" Smith). One twist is that it sounded in particular somewhat Post-WW2 Eastern Queens/Long Island-ish to me, which was strange. Overall it didn't feel to me like a dialectally authentic movie, though it's not like I can speak from personal experience of the 19c. > Several times in the dialogue reference is made to having "sand", with > the meaning of "guts"/"balls"/"bottle"/"backbone"/"right stuff". > > Where did it come from? And where did it go? (Yeah, I've looked it up > -- mid-19C blah-blah, but no real clues as to its origin.) You noticed, then, the cross-reference to "grit," no doubt. SignatureMartin Ambuhl |
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