Hooray,
I was browsing the net today and noticed a page on the Ivor Novello Awards on thisislondon.co.uk where if you peer through the gallery you will see Arctic Monkeys singer Alex Turner is described as looking ‘mardy.’
Not Mardi as in the French for Tuesday.
Not Mardi as in Mardi Gras
But just, mardy, M,A,R,D,Y – mardy.
While I know this is not an unusual word for the Sheffield born lads to use, (they have a fantastic song called Mardy Bum on their ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ album from Jan 2006) , for a London site this seems like real progress to me. (Though whether or not they know what it means there remains to be seen.)
Anyone who is familiar with the word ‘mardy’ will know it is infact one of the most fantastic, most approporiate most important words in the English language (in my opinion).
To give you a bit of help, according to www.reference.com, mardy is:
”East Midlands and South Yorkshire dialect slang for the word moody – It can also, in the East Midlands, mean: awkward; un-co-operative; bad tempered; whiney; aloof or terse or abrupt of speech (or any combination of these).”
If someone is being mardy, it means that they have a huge great big chin on/rag on.
You can be described as a mardy bum, mardy pants or mardy git, along with other less savoury variations.
Some people might say that Elton John, Sian Lloyd, or Patrick Kielty are all a bit mardy, though I couldn’t possibly comment.
It can also be shortened to mard-arse, as in,
“Don’t be such a mard-arse.”
A mardy person is generally whingey, whiney, moany, groany and slappable on a huge scale. (Mr B’s definition)
I can’t think of any other word that can describe so many things using just 5 letters.
It can be a verb or an adjective, a state of mind.
It can describe how someone looks, acts, or sounds. It can sum up their whole mood or attitude.
I love it.
Maaaaaaaaaardy
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May 30th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
You could settle a 20 year debate with this blog as my brother says ‘rat-on’ means the same as ‘chin-on’, I think he has made it up and ‘rat-on’ is totally made up, by him. Who is right?
Juste s’ajoutant dans un peu de Français pour continuer le thème culturel de grâce de blog de mme. Beaufoix à un programme de traduction j’ai trouvé tout en browing le filet plus tôt, se sentant mardy. Ingenious!
May 30th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Ingenious Rose – Je ne comprends pas! Please stop being such a smarty pants or I, indeed, will get v mardy. x
May 30th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Ingenious,
I’ve heard of rag-on, rack-on, chinny-rack-on, Jimmy Hill and Tutankham’, all of which I believe are official thesaurus entries linked to the word ‘mardy’ (or maybe not), but I have never heard of the term ‘rat-on’.
I think your brother is a cad and a fraud and you should probably not believe another word he says on the subject, or indeed about rats as he obviously gets them confused with chins.
Also, be careful if he ever seems to have grown a large beard over night, it may just have whiskers, a tail and very bad teeth.
Also, thank you for carrying on the French theme. I too have tried to further my linguistic skills and have tonight discovered that ‘mardy’ in French, is ‘mardy’, and ‘chin on’ is ‘menton dessus.’
Soeli, don’t get mardy sweetie, get a big ‘menton dessus’, it sounds a posh.
May 30th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Mmmm… all very interesting, the mud is beginnning to clear. I seem to remember my brother – Ingenious Pete – told me that rat-on DID exist around the time that Roland Rat was on television. (To think there is a whole generation out there, or maybe two, who have never heard of Roland Rat – I’m getting old, sob!) This Roland Rat association cannot be a coincidence. It looks as if I have been taken for a fool for 20 years. I must sign off immediately and reflect on this. PS Now that I’ve discovered Google Translate (Ahh -she cheated and doesn’t wrtie fluent French at all – fear not Soeli) the blogging world is our oyster. I think you should should start a German theme Ms Beaufoix so I can experiment with the English – German button. Ingenious!
May 31st, 2007 at 10:48 am
Hmmm, I think Ingenious Pete has indeed been having you on for 20 years. I have researched the term rat-on in relation to Roland Rat but all that came up was ‘Rat on the Road.’ There’s a lovely(?) fansite here if you wanted to do more research… http://www.ratfans.com/roland.htm
Brothers can be so mean.
My brother Dave convinced my brother Steve that ‘Kamen’ meant ‘Stephanie’ in Spanish. So, he would call Steve ‘Kamen’ in front of my parents and they had no idea why Steve would explode and attempt to break Dave’s ankles.
Naughty boys.
I haven’t tried google translate but I like http://www.babelfish.altavista.com/tr.
I did know my directions though. Just not the rest.
Very impressed with your French though Ingenious. You’ve been doing very well if you’ve only just thought of online translation today.
Must be the influence of ingenius junior.
July 21st, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Eeeeee that’s awesome! I’m AMAZED that someone else knows the word ‘mardy’
xx