Re: Of flowers and aspersions (seen on aus.dvd)

From: John Atkinson (johnacko_at_bigpond.com)
Date: 03/30/05 

Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 02:12:52 GMT

"Dylan Sung" <dylanwhs.tsktsktsk@pacific.net.hk> wrote...
>
> "Richard Herring" <junk@[127.0.0.1]> wrote...

> > Ron Hardin <rhhardin@mindspring.com> writes
> >>Jacques Guy wrote:
> >>>
> >>> "People who live in Usenet shouldn't be casting nasturtiums at
other
> >>> Usenet inhabitants..."
> >>>
> >>> This is the second time in... oh, say, 25 years that I see this
> >>> expression. The first time was from an Australian girl who
> >>> must have been in her twenties. I just did a Google search
> >>> and got 362 hits. Has anyone else here come across it?
> >>
> >>I'd suspect it came from ``nasty'' if I heard it, assuming it means
> >>something bad.
> >
> > While I don't wish to cast aspersions on your command of English,
your
> > suspicions would be wrong.
>
> I think the more familiar phrase is something like
>
> 'people who live in glass houses should not throw stones'.

Maybe more familiar, but completely unrelated. "To cast an aspersion
on" is, indeed, a familiar phrase. In my family, we used the
"nasturtium" form when I was young. If I'd bothered to think about it,
I'd probably have thought it unique to our familiolect (I never heard
anyone else use it), probably invented by our grandmother (it was the
sort of thing she'd do). Apparently not.

John.