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I need someone with the skills higher than mine
Posted by wayne tanner on March 31, 2007 - 12:19am
I am sure Gary is the go to guy on this but during a Brain induced flatulant moment I thought to myself I have to be honourable and "not harp on this topic". Where and how does the term "harping" on a topic come from. I looked in several on line resources and can find no where how the term Harping became involved i in the English langauge.
Your thoughts???
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next brew on me wayne!
Good question Wayne me boy, while harp can be a lager..or it can be a seal, or even a musical instrument, the meaning of what you refer too can be had HERE but for some posts I prefer the old usenet post cello term troll and I never feed trolls .
**********************************************************************
"Did A.J.Krapper organize a mass walk-out of latrines?"
-zenGary
and as an aside
Your skills are important to SBP, your full time job, your job in raising a family and your fireguy job, you have high skills ..that a lot of people couldnt match.
cheers
**********************************************************************
"Did A.J.Krapper organize a mass walk-out of latrines?"
-zenGary
harping
hi wayne. looks like garym beat me to the punch. i think it comes from the irish trying to agree on something over a few pints of Harp beer. cheers.
kltpzyxm
Chiming in on harping on
I don't know about skills, all I can say is "I ain't had no ... complaints"
But as for harping on about, shrouded in antiquity as it is it is Elizabethan at the livelong very least ... because
is from Hamlet (1603) whereas the lager sign, from the pre-revolutionary flag of the Republicans, the St Pat's football club, the St. Pat's division in the central american wars, and also appearing on cans of the Black Stuff and other fine brews, is more than likely more etymologically kin to "Éireann go Brach", which, on due reflection, considering the likely loquacious liberties of a libated 'publican expounding on the 3 hundred years it took to make the Newfoundland-inspired green white orange tricolor into more than rhetoric, could, when placed before a less than patient brit, evoke such comments as a "Still harping on" over The Troubles. But if there is, I can find no reference ;)
Harping / The Real Story
To Wayne and Garym....you don't always have to go to the classics....and sometimes we have to give "TinselTown" credit for something. "Harping goes back to the Hollywood productions
of the Marx Bros. Movies...I think it may have started with
"A Night at the Opera", but as you will recall, "Harpo" Marx was a "Mute" and expressed himself in 2 ways...thru his music
with the "Harp", but also with a noisy Hand Horn
it became his "audible" extension of the
Harp...it was his frustration that
precipitated the use of his noisy
horn, and since his name was "Harpo"
, it was natural to refer to his very
extroverted "pantomime" as "Harping"
Zodiac.
400 Years of Tinseltown!
Wow, zodiac, I had no idea. I mean, I did think Errol Flynn was already old when I myself was but a lad, and being an ex-pat Winnipegger I was well versed in Deanna Durbin lore, but I simply had no idea the silver screen predated Shakespeare. That totally explains why their rough draft editions are so terse and shallow compared to the later fully worked out and elaborated plays we see at Stratford!
It's much older garym
The origins go much further back Gary. Too bad they had to use their finger motion to make the legs move :)
http://www.philipcoppens.com/cavepaintings.html
Dan O.
The "Harping Satire"
C'mon Garym, the Hollywood Harping thing was a joke.
My Hollywood days go all the way back to
the days of Errol Flynn (aside from
his "Swashbuckling" days...he was the
one who insisted on using real RedNeck
Likker when they were filming the story
of the Barrymore family)...and just for
further confirmation, I worked at the
Delmar Beach Club in Santa Monica
(where Pico meets the Pacific) when
Liz Taylor was living there with her
"Bitchy" mother.....so you can challenge
me on anything relating to "Tinsel Town"
or specifically...Warner Bros....but
more importantly my time in Winnipeg
goes back to the period following
Deanna Durbin, when I listened to
the early radio days with personalities
such as "Porky" Charbonneau...Bill Walker
(who moved to Toronto to do TV)...you
know, the "Heady" days of the Blue
Bombers, when "Indian" Jack Jacobs
was one of the best Q-Backs in the CFL
and "Bud" Grant eventually became
Coach?? Remember? Zodiac.