The irresistible thing about hunting word origins is you go down linguistic rabbit holes wherein matters historical, poetical, social and, in some cases, sexual are discovered. This brings me to the word of the day, lallygag, which I heard last evening in The Quiet Man, an old and unimaginably vile movie starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. It’s impossible to recount all the ways in which this film is intellectually insulting. One is Mr Wayne’s abject lack of acting skill. Another is his character’s treatment of his wife. A Neanderthal would lose consciousness laughing at this portrayal as entirely too brutish. In one scene, Wayne’s literally dragging his furious spouse by her flaming red hair across a rocky Irish field because she won’t submit to his will. They’re pursued by a mob of villagers taking bets on an upcoming fistfight and are also drunk. Oh, yeah, lallygag…
© 2024 John Oliver
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