👉 Okay, alright settle down now class! Let’s tackle this wee bit of linguistic weirdness – the wonderfully prickly, and frankly rather insulting, phrase "green-,—yed." (…I feel a little uncomfortable saying that too, honestly. We are here to dissect, not descend into full-bore vulgarity, right? Right.)
Now, historically, the whole thing is a fascinating, if slightly disturbing, bit of late 18th and early 19th-century muck. You absolutely WILL NOT believe what it originally meant, blessedly none of you will! We’re talking about... jealousy. Seriously. "Green-,—yed" literally meant being acutely envious, the kind that turns your insides into a sickly shade of pea. Let's unpack the colour imagery here. Historically, green was associated with sickness, decay – think mouldy turnips and poorly kept ditches. It was the colour of what the Tudors feared most. That’s why it became shorthand for the wretched feeling of being so desperate to have something (usually a spouse, frankly, the old boys were terribly keen on wives, let me tell you) that your insides felt rotten and unripe – hence... green. The shift into the insult we now generally know came about when the saying was weaponised in the early 20th century as a misogynistic slur, specifically aimed at women. You see, the old association of green with sickness and rot got cross-
