From Helen Brown's latest Telegraph diary entry:
A new guide to English published this month by Oxford University Press reveals that writers' names are edging their way into the vernacular in the most unexpected ways. According to The Language Report, by Susie Dent, "Seamus Heaney" is now rhyming slang for "bikini".(Via Maud Newton.)
Now, it occurs to me that rhyming slang usually drops the actual rhyming word, leaving the connection mysterious to the uninitiated: thus china plate = 'mate' was quickly reduced to china. If this happens here, the word for 'bikini' will be seamus, pronounced exactly like shamus 'private eye,' leading to yet more trans-Atlantic misunderstanding and adding to the lexicon available to hard-boiled mystery writers: "The shamus was leering at the seamus on the sheila selling sea-shells by the seashore..."
Posted by languagehat at October 23, 2003 03:30 PMDid anyone else read that word as sham-us the first time they saw it?
Posted by: Aidan Kehoe at October 24, 2003 07:35 AMSo, no respect, not even for Uncle Seamus?
That's the way the cookie crumbles...
(by the way, I used to think "bikini" was pronounced "biKAYni"...I think I was confused by Yeats)
Posted by: commonbeauty at October 24, 2003 11:39 AMAnd I used to think Heaney was pronounced HAYni - then they would rhyme.
Posted by: MM at October 26, 2003 11:59 AMI think that's the point cb was making, in a roundabout sort of way. Apparently Heaney himself says "heeney," but the other is certainly a possible Irish pronunciation.
Posted by: language hat at October 26, 2003 12:37 PMtis pronounced shay-mes hee-knee
Posted by: irishkaz at May 10, 2005 05:12 PM