{"id":1268,"date":"2009-01-02T15:15:41","date_gmt":"2009-01-02T14:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1268"},"modified":"2012-11-13T15:48:45","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T14:48:45","slug":"word-of-the-day-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=1268","title":{"rendered":"Word of the day: boss-eyed"},"content":{"rendered":"

I sometimes think that I’ve led a rather sheltered life because from time to time I come across a word – usually a colloquialism – that I don’t know but my wife does. On reflection, I have come to the view that my deficiency is the result of my up-bringing by a single parent who was Italian so that, if the word is more likely to be spoken than written, I may not know it.
\nI know – you want an example; and I’m going to give you one. We recently saw an episode of the television comedy “The IT Crowd”<\/a> which used the word ‘boss-eyed’. My wife knew what this meant, but I didn’t. She explained that it means ‘cross-eyed’ but she couldn’t explain to me the origin of this word.
\nI had to look it up in my copy of the much-used and ever-faithful “Brewer’s Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable”<\/a>. It turns out that word originates from the field of archery. The straw to which the circular target is attached is called a ‘boss’ and, if one was a bad shot and hit the straw instead of the target, one was said to be ‘boss-eyed’.
\nSo now you know. But did you know beforehand?
\nNow check out a clip from “The IT Crowd” that uses the word – it’s here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sometimes think that I’ve led a rather sheltered life because from time to time I come across a word – usually a colloquialism – that I don’t know but my wife does. On reflection, I have come to the view that my deficiency is the result of my up-bringing by a single parent who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10009,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions\/10009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}