Comments on: Phrase Origins – A1 and Bangalore Torpedo

By: V M S

V M S — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 07:32:00 +0000

Sukumar,

I still remember that we had a dedicated chapter for this words in 6th or 7th grade state board tamil book. One interesting word is ‘OC’ and it was derived from British accounting where they declare some unwarranted cost as “Other’s Cost”, still all over Tamil Nadu we use OC for free of cost.

I don’t know the origin of ‘OB’( overa OB adikiran), that is something new but used widely in office environment.

It is not OB, it is OP. Meaning – On Other’s pay. on Other’s paying of salary, one wastes his work time, work place.

By: VJ

VJ — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:35:13 +0000

Any idea about “peter”, “loose”, “Madras eye”?

By: rajasgopal sukumar

rajasgopal sukumar — Fri, 16 May 2008 02:10:18 +0000

Good find Sujatha. Not sure our OB and the Singlish OB are related due to the etymology provided by you and the Singlish site you pointed to? What do the others think?

By: Sujatha

Sujatha — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:45:08 +0000

I found another definition of OB which sounds good, in a Singlish(Singapore English) dictionary site :

http://www.singlishdictionary.com/singlish_O.htm#off-beat

OB – Off beat or Obiang

Offbeat Cha- cha -[< Eng. cha-cha a type of ballroom dance to Latin-American rhythm] :Off-beat and abbrev. to OB. unfashionable. Obiang replaced the 1960s off-beat cha-cha, which was shortened to off-beat in the 70s, and then simply o.b. in the 80s.

obiang: [origin could be Hk]: zig-zag, sticking out this way and that,Out of fashion; in a bad or dubious style or taste, esp. ostentatiously.

By: Sukumar

Sukumar — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:39:20 +0000

Yes Karthik. We don’t seem to have a proper citation for OB. So i guess you could be right.

Archana,
Thanks. No need to apologize. I just recalled your comment from ch1blogs. that is all. I did a search on google and couldn’t come up with a citation for the soap box story. Definitely a brilliant one to illustrate out of the box thinking.