An Awkward Squad is a group of individuals, normally within an existing organisation or structure, who resist or obstruct change, either through incompetence or by deliberate association.
An Awkward Squad is a group of individuals, normally within an existing organisation or structure, who resist or obstruct change, either through incompetence or by deliberate association.
It is commonly accepted that shortly before his death in 1796 Robert Burns uttered the words "Don't let the awkward squad fire over me". [1] [2] At this time the phrase was in use in military slang for a group of recruits who seemed incapable of understanding discipline or not yet sufficiently trained or disciplined to properly carry out their duties. [3] [4] [5]
John Clare, an English peasant poet, wrote with his own spelling and no punctuation. He complained in the 1820s to his editors that people could understand him, and he refused to use "that awkward squad of colon, semi-colon, comma, and full stop", according to the display in the John Clare Cottage, in Helpston.
In Canto 7, stanza 52 of Byron's Don Juan , the Russian general Suvorov (or "Suwarrow" as Byron anglicizes it) is described training the 'awkward squad' prior to the battle of Ismail.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, in his 1842 essay on Frederic the Great, used the phrase to describe the army of Frederic's father.
In her 1853 novel Villette , Charlotte Brontë writes of M. Paul Emanuel: "Irritable he was; one heard that, as he apostrophized with vehemence the awkward squad under his orders." Brontë had also used the phrase four years earlier, in Shirley .
In Chapter 16 of Our Mutual Friend (1864–65), Charles Dickens described the character Sloppy as a "Full-Private Number One in the Awkward Squad of the rank and file of life".
Norman Cameron used the words to end his 1950 poem Forgive me, sire.
The tag of 'awkward squad' has been applied to a group of left-wing trade unionists in the United Kingdom, marked out by their opposition to the Labour Party's economic policies. The group includes Bob Crow, Mark Serwotka, and Tony Woodley. In a Parliamentary sense, however, it can also apply to the left-wing of the Labour Party, which perennially occupies a bench of the House of Commons which allows its members to heckle and unnerve the Prime Minister regularly.
Rhyming slang is a form of slang word construction in the English language. It is especially prevalent among Cockneys in England, and was first used in the early 19th century in the East End of London; hence its alternative name, Cockney rhyming slang. In the US, especially the criminal underworld of the West Coast between 1880 and 1920, rhyming slang has sometimes been known as Australian slang.
Pig Latin is a language game, argot, or cant in which words in English are altered, usually by adding a fabricated suffix or by moving the onset or initial consonant or consonant cluster of a word to the end of the word and adding a vocalic syllable to create such a suffix. For example, Wikipedia would become Ikipediaway. The objective is often to conceal the words from others not familiar with the rules. The reference to Latin is a deliberate misnomer; Pig Latin is simply a form of argot or jargon unrelated to Latin, and the name is used for its English connotations as a strange and foreign-sounding language. It is most often used by young children as a fun way to confuse people unfamiliar with Pig Latin.
A slang is a vocabulary of an informal register, common in verbal conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-groups in order to establish group identity, exclude outsiders, or both. The word itself came about in the 18th century and has been defined in multiple ways since its conception.
Clare Short is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for International Development from 1997 to 2003.
Derek Simpson is a British trade unionist who was the Joint-General Secretary of the UK's biggest private-sector trade union, Unite, from 2007 until 2010. He was previously the General Secretary of Amicus from 2002 until its merger with the Transport and General Workers' Union to form Unite in 2007.
Dennis Edward Skinner is a British former politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolsover for 49 years, from 1970 to 2019. A member of the Labour Party, he is known for his left-wing views and republican sentiments. Before entering Parliament, he worked for more than 20 years as a coal miner.
Bollocks is a word of Middle English origin meaning "testicles". The word is often used in British English and Irish English in a multitude of negative ways; it most commonly appears as a noun meaning "rubbish" or "nonsense", an expletive following a minor accident or misfortune, or an adjective to describe something that is of poor quality or useless. It is also used in common phrases like "bollocks to this", which is said when quitting a task or job that is too difficult or negative, and "that's a load of old bollocks", which generally indicates contempt for a certain subject or opinion. Conversely, the word also appears in positive phrases such as "the dog's bollocks" or more simply "the bollocks", which will refer to something which is admired or well-respected.
Pikey is an ethnic slur referring to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people. It is used mainly in the United Kingdom and in Ireland to refer to people who belong to groups which had a traditional travelling lifestyle. Groups referred to with this term include Irish Travellers, English Gypsies, Welsh Kale, Scottish Lowland Travellers, Scottish Highland Travellers, and Funfair Travellers. These groups consider the term to be highly offensive.
In show business, the green room is the space in a theatre or similar venue that functions as a waiting room and lounge for performers before, during, and after a performance or show when they are not engaged on stage. Green rooms typically have seating for the performers, such as upholstered chairs and sofas.
"Feck" is a word that has several vernacular meanings and variations in Irish English, Scots, and Middle English.
Notions are the specialised terms and customs used by pupils of Winchester College. Some are specific to the school; others are survivals of slang or dialect that were once in wider usage. Notions tests were formerly held in each house of the school, and numerous manuscript and printed books were written to collect notions for pupils to learn. Some notions were customs, such as the Morning Hills assembly held on top of St. Catherine's Hill; others were humorous, like the Pempe, a practical joke played on new pupils. Most notions have now fallen into disuse.
"Beam me up, Scotty" is a catchphrase and misquotation that made its way into popular culture from the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Original Series. It comes from the command Captain Kirk gives his chief engineer, Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, when he needs to be "transported" back to the Starship Enterprise.
Hard left or hard-left is a term that is used particularly in Australian and British English to describe the most radical members of a left-wing political party or political group. The term is also a noun and modifier taken to mean the far-left and the left-wing political movements and ideas outside the mainstream centre-left. The term has been used to describe wings and factions of several political parties across the world, such as the left-wing of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom and left-wing factions of the Australian Labor Party.
The 1988 Labour Party leadership election saw Tony Benn, identified with the left wing of the British Labour Party, challenge the incumbent leader Neil Kinnock identified with the more moderate social democratic wing.
"Come hither child" is a poem written by the English poet Emily Jane Brontë, one of the four Brontë siblings famous for literature in the first half of the 19th century. The poem was written on 19 July 1839. It is set in the imaginary realm of Gaaldine, referring to Ula, a province of Gaaldine.
Digger slang, also known as ANZAC slang or Australian military slang, is Australian English slang as employed by the various Australian armed forces throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. There have been four major sources of the slang: the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The name Digger slang derives from the cultural stereotype of the Digger in the First World War. Graham Seal AM, Professor of Folklore at Curtin University of Technology, calls the slang Diggerese. It is a combination of an occupational jargon and an in-group argot.
The awkward squad was an informal grouping of socialist trade unionists in the United Kingdom.
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder is a work by Vladimir Lenin attacking assorted critics of the Bolsheviks who claimed positions to their left. Most of these critics were proponents of ideologies later described as left communism. The book was written in 1920 and published in Russian, German, English and French later in the year. A copy was then distributed to each delegate at the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern, several of whom were mentioned by Lenin in the work. The book is divided into ten chapters and an appendix.
Woke is a political slang adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) originally meaning alertness to racial prejudice and discrimination. Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.
Gammon is a pejorative popularised in British political culture since around 2012. The term refers in particular to the colour of a person's flushed face when expressing their strong opinions, as compared to the type of pork of the same name. It is characterised in this context by the Oxford English Dictionary as occurring "in various parasynthetic adjectives referring to particularly reddish or florid complexions". In 2018, it became particularly known as a term to describe either those on the political right or those who supported Brexit.