Radio was playin', Desmond Dekker was singin'

[venta]

A quick question:



[Poll #1344729]

Edit: I don't mean "give me a list of names", I mean "which term would you naturally use in conversation if talking about such a thing".

If you're going to fill in an answer, please do so before reading on.

I would habitually refer to that sort of stereo (ie portable, speaker at either end, tape deck in the middle) as a ghetto-blaster. I seem to remember that that's what everyone was calling them in the 80s when I first started interacting with such things.

Problem is, I've no idea of the origin of the term. Which ghettos were being blasted exactly ? Is it possible that someone somewhere might find it an offensive term ?[*] Is it even in common enough usage now that I could expect someone to be sure what I meant - or am I just hopelessly outdated in my choice of name ?

What other words are there ? Apart from radio-cassette player, of course. I'm not very clear on what exactly a boombox might be - could it be one of those, or is it subtly different ? Can I still call it a ghetto blaster if it's got a CD player in it ? Does the choice of name depend on the kind of music player - could one still blast ghettos with Wagner, for example ?

[*] According to Wikipedia, yes. But it's a particularly shoddily written piece, plus I'm interested in what other people think.


_{That image is just quickly grabbed from google image search, so if you're in The Future, it's probably red-exed by now.}

Comments

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I'm confused

You were lied to. It's short for "golliwog".

[venta.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I'd always assumed golliwog was an extension of wog, a sort of cutesifying of it to make it a cuddly toy.

T'internet suggests that the oriental backronym is common (if wrong) so I wasn't individually lied to.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

I'd heard the backronym, too, and it engendered the same confusion; the OED (which is the only source I'm keen to investigate at work!) says not only "often said to be an acronym, but none of the many suggested etymologies is satisfactorily supported by the evidence" but defines it as "A vulgarly offensive name for a foreigner, esp. one of Arab extraction" (my emphasis).

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

I've been called a wog. So were my sisters, father and grandmother. I'd find it offensive if anyone tried to "explain" the term away with that backronym although it's new to me. It's also offensive in itself, "wily" implies a lot more than just "clever".

I'm still reeling that gollywogs are openly for sale in the UK in the 21st century. That's not right.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I wasn't intending to imply that explaining it made it OK - or that calling someone a Wily Oriental was acceptable - just that I was interested in the etymology. Even if a word has a perfectly "reasonable" origin, it can still be offensive - see "Paki". Even though it ought in some sense to be analogous to "Brit", it clearly isn't because of its usage.

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, I don't have you pegged as someone who thinks it's okay to call folks wogs - don't worry. It's just that I'd be careful about who you mentioned the "explanation" to as well.

And yeah, about "paki", what you said. Oh, for the record, I've also been called a paki. Sigh.

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

It is in Australia, which goes to show it's All About The Emphasis (see also: "common", "foreign").

I remember an uproar here (well ok, some mild disgruntlement) when an Australian newspaper carried the headline (something like); "Aussies thrash Pakis!" (it was a cricket report). We shorten everything, so "Pakistanis" to "Pakis" is nothing more than that!

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

Really? In Australia, it tends to refer more or less to all foreigners, and possibly especially so to peoples from or descended from around the meditteranean (eg Greek, Italian). But I've never heard it used in reference to black people.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

People who write etymological dictionaries vary from "probably" to "possibly" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wog) to ("of unknown origin" (http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/wog_1).

As pure speculation, especial use referring to the vicinity of the Mediterranean is perhaps due to similarity with "wop"? http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/wop