👉 Okay, settle yourselves down now, let’s tackle this wonderfully British, spectacularly underappreciated little squiggle of a word – the singularly splendid…
cough delicately cough here
...
éndőff
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Now, frankly, when I hear most young people throw that word around (and yes, I've aged out of throwing things around, generally. Unless it’s a very well-aimed documentary, naturally.), they just utter it with the kind of baffled shrug you give to a pigeon who’s suddenly staring at your shoelace. Let's unpack that, because the truth about the sodoff is this: there isn’t a definitive, universally agreed upon, glorious, terribly British meaning! It's delightfully amphibious, existing somewhere between a derogatory insult, an exasperated grunt, and basically… a general expression of less-than-stellar disappointment. Here's what we roughly know, gleaned from the murky swamps of Old English and anecdotal backstreet swearing: Originally (and most stuffily): It meant a bloke – essentially a man. Quite frankly, it wasn’t exactly a terribly flattering designation! Like saying, in 18th century Kent, "Right, that sodoff is fiddling with the turnips again." As an insult (the good stuff, honestly!): You could throw it at someone as a dismissive, rather ungentlemanly way to tell them they were being a
