Brian Hurley: Brian Hurley of Australia asks, Monday, December 3, 2007, on a point of lexicography, whether people can still get “jewed”How words lose their meaning…
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Brian
Hurley of Australia asks, , on a point of lexicography, whether people can still get “jewed”
How words lose their meaning
I AM seventy-four years old.When I was young, living in the North of England, we always used the expression ” you got Jewed!” whenever somebody got short-changed or paid good money for worthless goods. I wonder is it still in use?
YOU are right, that word used to exist, but under concerted pressure from certain folks the publishers of the world’s leading dictionaries removed the offending verb around twenty years ago. People now get screwed, but not jewed.
That word went into the Memory
Hole, as we citizens of the Internet say, and if it weren’t for brisk and sparkling human memories like yours it would never have existed.
The verb, that is — not the business practice to which it refers.
From the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1968
edition, 2,516 pages), page 1,064: