cornered

so i teach at CHIJ Katong Primary on Monday mornings and i was just looking around the canteen during my break and this stall name got me thinking.




if you can't see the image clearly the stall name is actually "Sedap Corner". "Sedap" is the malay word for delicious in case you didn't know. anyway the stall name got me thinking about how important names of places are in not only attracting attention but also portraying a particular image the stall owners wants to associate themselves with. of course, in a primary school, kids don't really care about the stall names. there's no need for any major marketing strategies. haha. but it reminded me of Adam's Corner, a popular food place in Singapore and then i thought of Poet's Corner and Speaker's Corner. basically the word "corner" haa been used in naming places, or groups. Looking the word up in the Longman dictionary online, i also found that in Britain, there's a term called "corner shop" which refers to a small shop near houses where people go to get daily needs, very much like our local mama shops. and the urban dictionary online described corners as places where 1) one can go to to get drugs, and 2) where one can find prostitutes. these rather controversial meanings aside, the point i'm trying to make is, obviously these places are not named "corners" based on their geographical location but rather the word has been made to refer to a quiet secluded place. as for Adam's Corner and Sedap Corner, i suppose the image being portrayed here is more of a humble and and cosy area for friends to get together to have a nice meal. the image targeted here by the use of the word "corner" is obviously not one that is grand and high-class. the word more appropriately indicates something more homey and close to heart.

Welcome/ First post

Hi everyone!

Hope the semester is going well for you so far. Can't say the same for myself though. Haha. Anyway welcome to my blog! Looking forward to all of your interesting posts and I'll try my best to entertain you with my own daily experiences with the English lexicon. =)

So for my first entry, I'd like to talk about a word I came across while reading "Shopoholic Abroad", a popular chic lit written by Sophie Kinsella (please don't judge me, a girl is entitled to a little bit of mindless reading and escapism once in a while =P). I came across this word: portaloo. This immediately caught my attention and I turned to every NUS student's digital bible, Wikipedia, and I found out that it actually refers to a portable toilet. But what is more interesting is in the following paragraph taken from the Wikipedia entry on portable toilets:

"A portable toilet is a modern, portable, self-contained outhouse manufactured of molded plastic in a variety of colors and is often used as a temporary toilet for construction sites and large gatherings and events. Portable toilets are referred to colloquially or sold under such brands as Porta-John, PortaJane, Johnny On The Spot, Port-O-Let, Port-a-Loo, Porta-Potty, Tidy John, John To Go, Biffs, and Toi-Toi."

Based on the above quote, it seems that the colloquial word was derived from brand name rather than anything else. I found this rather interesting because it got me thinking about the different words that exist today which can refer to a toilet. Off the top of my head I can think of words like washroom, bathroom, lavatory, ladies and gents/men's room. Googling it, I found terms like loo (a British term), WC (which stands for Water Closet commonly used in France), CR (short for Comfort Room commonly used in the Philippines), Dunny (an Australian expression for an outdoor toilet), Privy (old-fashioned word used mostly in North England and Scotland which is actually an alternative word to "private") and Latrine (a term commonly used in military which refers to "any point of entry facility where human waste is disposed of, which a civilian might call a bathroom or toilet, regardless of how modern or primitive it is"). It is really interesting how such a universal and common concept like "toilet" can have many different terms in different societies. I'm wondering if any of you have come across any other terms which I've left out here? Do share!

And if you noticed the Wikipedia entry I quoted earlier also mentions "Johnny On The Spot" which we came across in one of our earlier lectures. Again, Google or Wikipedia is the answer to everything isn't it? The expression can apparently refer to a portable toilet as well but according to dictionary.reference.com,

John·ny-on-the-spot (jŏn'ē-ŏn'thə-spŏt', -ôn'-)
n. Informal
A person who is available and ready to act when needed.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

So it's an idiom which is used to refer to an extremely reliable person, an American idiom. How does that link to a portable toilet? Maybe the company who named their portable toilet brand "Johnny on the Spot" is saying that their portable toilets are "available and ready to act when needed".

Do share with me your thoughts and ideas on this. =)


laters!

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet#Etymology
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_toilet
- http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Johnny-on-the-spot