Woody Words.

June 25, 2016 by 45 Comments

I don’t know if this is “Monty Python’s best sketch ever,” but it’s certainly their most linguistically focused, and it’s hilarious throughout. Gorn! (Or is that “gone”?)

Update (Nov. 2020). The video clip at the Log link no longer functions — apparently all separate clips of that scene have been removed at the insistence of the copyright holders — but you can watch the sketch at this official video of the episode (skip to 21:09; you have to unclick the mute symbol).

Comments

  1. Brett says
    June 25, 2016 at 11:50 am

    Honestly, I’ve always thought this was probably the least funny of the really famous Monty Python sketches.

  2. languagehat says
    June 25, 2016 at 12:11 pm

    Really? Boy, senses of humor sure differ.

  3. Keith Ivey says
    June 25, 2016 at 12:24 pm

    Does it count as really famous? I wouldn’t have thought it was in the top 10, or even top 25, in well-knownness.

  4. David L says
    June 25, 2016 at 12:41 pm

    Language Hat… Language Hat… Very woody sort of name for a blog.

  5. languagehat says
    June 25, 2016 at 1:13 pm

    Does it count as really famous? I wouldn’t have thought it was in the top 10, or even top 25, in well-knownness.

    I agree; in fact, when Dave linked it at Wordorigins I’d forgotten its existence.

  6. David L says
    June 25, 2016 at 1:39 pm

    And yes, gorn is (non-rhotically) an almost defunct and very upper class pronunciation of gone that even Her Majesty no longer uses, I think. As in, Matilda has gorn orff to Cheltenham with that frightful bounder Featherstonehaugh.

  7. Brett says
    June 25, 2016 at 1:45 pm

    @Keith Ivey: I just did a Google search for the most famous Monty Python sketches. The first search result was a top-ten list that it didn’t make it onto. The second was a top-twenty-five, and that sketch was at number eleven. I certainly encounter references to it much more commonly that to many other sketches that are much funnier. (Obviously, of course, these lists shouldn’t be taken too seriously. The Spanish Inquisition didn’t even make the list of twenty-five, and it must be one of the most referenced of all, perhaps second only to the SPAM sketch.)

  8. languagehat says
    June 25, 2016 at 2:05 pm

    The Spanish Inquisition didn’t even make the list of twenty-five

    Then I put it to you that that list is an absurdity.

  9. Paul says
    June 25, 2016 at 3:31 pm

    Caribou gorn …
    Marvellous, because you don’t notice the shotgun at his feet initially.

  10. John Cowan says
    June 25, 2016 at 3:34 pm

    I’m pretty sure it’s gone, the vowel of which is often idiosyncratic (it’s the only word in AusE with /ɒː/). What I don’t understand is the “song” near the end: I played it several times, but it’s just syllables to me.

    For much more on tinny words, see Language Log, which has done dozens of articles on word aversion. Seemingly just one on woody words, however, including (in the comments) “smock smock smock …” from our own Hat.

    T.S. Eliot’s “Mister Mistoffelees” is full of rhymes that puzzled me as a child, starting with “Mistoffelees” rhyming with “scoff. / All his”. But the truly confusing bit was the couplet

    You have seen it one moment, and then it is gawn!
    But you’ll find it next week lying out on the lawn.

    Since for me gone/lawn is a straightforward and perfect rhyme, I couldn’t understand the point of the misspelling.

  11. Trond Engen says
    June 25, 2016 at 4:25 pm

    Brett: The Spanish Inquisition didn’t even make the list of twenty-five

    Hat: Then I put it to you that that list is an absurdity.

    It’s certainly unexpected.

  12. marie-lucie says
    June 25, 2016 at 5:15 pm

    I have not seen too many Monte Python episodes but I did not find this one funny. Perhaps it is my lack of humour or imagination! What is the point of the girl screaming and leaving on hearing “tinny”?

  13. David Marjanović says
    June 25, 2016 at 5:48 pm

    Yay, sound symbolism.

  14. John Cowan says
    June 25, 2016 at 5:54 pm

    m-l: It’s an extreme case of word aversion, as many people have to moist and some other words. Most people just feel funny or disgusted by the sound/meaning combination, though; they don’t find it necessary to shriek and leave the room!

  15. marie-lucie says
    June 25, 2016 at 9:51 pm

    Thanks JC. So it was supposed to be her own phobia. I thought maybe it had more general connotations.

  16. MMcM says
    June 25, 2016 at 9:52 pm

    OED, s.v. go, v. 7. Past participle.

    1974 G. Chapman et al. Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1989) II. xlii. 290 Yes, she’s gorn off because Mansfield said tin to her.

  17. Lazar says
    June 25, 2016 at 10:08 pm

    Ah, the lorst par of the British Empar…

  18. languagehat says
    June 26, 2016 at 8:56 am

    OED, s.v. go, v. 7. Past participle.

    It makes me unreasonably happy to know that line has been immortalized in the OED. Someone had fun creating that citation.

  19. TR says
    June 26, 2016 at 12:48 pm

    Hat, I like how you take it for granted that the OED is more likely to be immortal than Monty Python.

  20. Brett says
    June 26, 2016 at 5:28 pm

    Some of the best Python sketches may be remembered more or less forever. The Cheese Shop sketch, the Dead Parrot Sketch, or How to Defend Yourself Against Fresh Fruit (Marie-Lucie, watch that one if you’ve never seen it; if you don’t find it funny, you just don’t like Monty Python) are pretty much timeless.

    On the other hand, many of their funniest bits are extremely dated. They did a number of sketches related to the decline of the once-fabled British mining industry (which was such an important topic in 1970s British discourse that there are also several Doctor Who episodes parodying the situation), some of which are very funny, but for viewers not acquainted with the subject matter, they are probably losing a lot of their punch. When I first saw the show in the 1980s, it was already notably dated; my mother complained that Flying Circus had gone off the air too soon to make fun of Margaret Thatcher. (It turns out that Thatcher actually did get more ribbing than any other contemporary politician on the show, but that amounted to about three references over five years.)

  21. languagehat says
    June 26, 2016 at 5:52 pm

    if you don’t find it funny, you just don’t like Monty Python

    I… I didn’t think it was very funny, sir…

  22. languagehat says
    June 26, 2016 at 5:53 pm

    Not unfunny, sir! It did give me a chuckle or two! I swear it did!

  23. TR says
    June 26, 2016 at 5:55 pm

    OK, if we’re tossing out Python favorites: Johann Gambolputty.

  24. Y says
    June 26, 2016 at 6:09 pm

    So the <small> tag works!

    edit: It doesn’t for us common commenters.

  25. languagehat says
    June 26, 2016 at 6:18 pm

    Huh. Well, anyone who wants to make use of it can send me the text of your comment and I’ll post it for you.

  26. Lars says
    June 26, 2016 at 6:19 pm

    There’s a thing: I found out that it will allow <font color=”red”> tags, for instance, but since they’re deprecated in HTML5, my browser doesn’t show the color. The modern equivalent is <span style=”color:red”>, but that isn’t allowed.

    EDIT: I’m confused, or something changed. I thought I’d seen it work recently.

  27. Narmitaj says
    June 26, 2016 at 8:16 pm

    For language people, The Argument Clinic sketch must be a top one. If you don’t find that one funny, then you probably won’t like Monty P.

  28. marie-lucie says
    June 27, 2016 at 10:47 am

    I didn’t like the gorn and even less the fresh fruits episodes, but the Argument Clinic and the Job Interview were better. Of course the Dead Parrot is great.

  29. J.W. Brewer says
    June 27, 2016 at 2:19 pm

    Surely the Hungarian phrasebook sketch should rank at or near the top of any list oriented toward linguistics-related subject matter?

  30. languagehat says
    June 27, 2016 at 2:36 pm

    Very true!

  31. marie-lucie says
    June 27, 2016 at 2:55 pm

    JWB, Yes, I thought of that one but could not quite remember the title except “Hungarian”.

  32. John Cowan says
    June 27, 2016 at 3:23 pm

    I don’t think the fresh-fruit sketch is funny exactly; it certainly doesn’t make me laugh, even though it does make the world’s warmongers look silly. It’s too painfully true to be funny.

  33. Y says
    June 27, 2016 at 3:32 pm

    I just learned of the Pythons’ sketch “Teach Yourself Heath”, making fun of PM Edward Heath’s peculiar accent. I haven’t heard it yet.

    Wikipedia says, “In later years, Heath’s peculiar accent – with its “strangulated” vowel sounds, combined with his non-Standard pronunciation of “l” as “w” and “out” as “eout”… Campbell speculates that his speech, unlike that of his father and younger brother, who both spoke with Kent accents, must have undergone “drastic alteration on encountering Oxford”, although retaining elements of Kent speech.”

  34. uwe says
    June 27, 2016 at 7:18 pm

    Most people just feel funny or disgusted by the sound/meaning combination…

    I’m surprised https://xkcd.com/853/ hasn’t been mentioned yet 🙂

  35. John Cowan says
    September 5, 2017 at 10:00 am

    It turns out that the song in this sketch is “For he’s going to marry Yum-Yum”, from Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado, per WP. I have known both words and tune since childhood, but I swear I still don’t recognize it here.

  36. Eamonn Morris says
    February 21, 2025 at 4:04 pm

    I believe that words are as notable for their sound as for their meaning. People seem to gravitate to certain words and phrases, depending on time and place. A popular phrase is like a popular song. People have an ‘ear for words’. The ‘twentysomethings’ I know say “I have no idea” instead of “I don’t know”; they say “I’m not gonna lie” instead of “to tell you the truth” or some other such phrase. I believe that these habits are mostly unrecognized but still universal. The “woody words/ tinny words” sketch seems to get at this phenomenon of human behavior.

  37. languagehat says
    February 21, 2025 at 4:33 pm

    The ‘twentysomethings’ I know […] say “I’m not gonna lie” instead of “to tell you the truth” or some other such phrase.

    They must be older twentysomethings; the younger ones say “no cap.”

  38. ktschwarz says
    February 22, 2025 at 7:55 am

    David L demonstrates the “almost defunct and very upper class” accent: “Matilda has gorn orff to Cheltenham with that frightful bounder Featherstonehaugh.”

    But the OED’s quote, transcribed by MMcM, reads: “Yes, she’s gorn off because Mansfield said tin to her.”

    Wait, is it “orff”, with an eye-dialect r, or just plain “off”? As MMcM noted, the OED has this quote in the forms section: it’s there as evidence for written forms and written representations of pronunciations, so “o(r)ff” is also relevant, since it indicates whether the writer thought “gone” and “off” had the same, marked, vowel or not. The cited source is a collection of transcripts from the TV series: “Because the shooting scripts were often changed during filming and editing of the shows, the book was built on transcripts of the dialogue taken for subtitling purposes, cross-checked against the syndicated tapes of the shows.”

    And, oops, the transcript book does read “gorn orff”. (Which is “a super woody sort of phrase”, according to the RAF Pilot.) The OED needs to fix that.

    They currently have 51 citations from the book, including s.v. silly

    1970 Well sir, I have a silly walk and I’d like to obtain a Government grant to help me develop it.

    And this quote

    1974 Squadron Leader Top hole. Bally Jerry pranged his kite right in the how’s your father.

    has peak citation density, being quoted for top hole, bally, and prang.

  39. Jerry Friedman says
    February 22, 2025 at 11:29 am

    @Hat: Here in New Mexico, I’ve heard my students, many of them in their early twenties or late teens, say “I’m not gonna lie”, though it’s been a while. I have not yet heard “No cap.” Or more concisely

    No “No cap”, Hat.

  40. languagehat says
    February 22, 2025 at 11:33 am

    Ah, it takes a while for the latest slang to reach the provinces.

  41. Brett says
    February 22, 2025 at 2:23 pm

    @ktschwarz: I don’t think it’s a good idea for the OED to be citing the RAF banter sketch as attestations of those words, since that such citations are supposed to be examples of words used in the sense given. The whole point of that sketch is that Eric Idle’s and Michael Palin’s characters are using a mixture of real RAF slang (“Cabbage crates coming over the briny!”) and nonce nonsense, which makes their banter incomprehensible to any of the other officers.

  42. ktschwarz says
    February 22, 2025 at 8:06 pm

    That just means they can’t use the sketch as the *only* evidence for these words, which of course they don’t. All three are used in the sketch in their usual senses; “Top hole. Bally Jerry pranged his kite” is perfectly coherent, it only starts to go off the rails after that. That’s the structure of the joke: start with the familiar image of the upper-class pilot, exaggerate it but still comprehensibly, *then* start mixing in the nonsense.

    (You have it backwards: “cabbage crates” is one of the fake ones. Plausible, but fictional. When “Cabbage crates coming over the briny” was used in Deep Space Nine, it was a shout-out — don’t think too hard about whether it was supposed to be real slang in-story!)

    The use of these words in a parody is evidence that they were still recognizable enough to enough of the audience in 1974 to set up the situation. Probably also that they were mockably dated by then.

  43. David Eddyshaw says
    February 22, 2025 at 8:53 pm

    The use of these words in a parody is evidence that they were still recognizable enough to enough of the audience in 1974 to set up the situation. Probably also that they were mockably dated by then

    Yes, to both.

    My mother has been heard actually using “bally” unironically (though not recently.) But then, my father also used to say “by Jove!” Tempora mutantur …

  44. Brett says
    February 22, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    @ktschwarz: For some reason, I had apparently misremembered cabbages as being real RAF slang for bombs, with the sketch therefore returning to something that might actually have been said at the end, but the other officers being unable to even understand that. However, at the beginning I would put the divergence from reasonableness a little earlier that you state. The “… pranged his kite…” has a parsable meaning, but it makes no sense as the beginning of Idle’s story.

  45. ktschwarz says
    February 23, 2025 at 3:15 pm

    “makes no sense as the beginning of Idle’s story” — Fair enough. I think they were just going for enough recognizable words to create an expectation that it will make sense, and then not making sense.

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