Recently I overheard this piece of office humour:
Colleague A: "We need a workplace outing."
Colleague B: "OK - your magazine's gay!"
(For those who don't get the joke - 'outing' can mean either "an excursion" or "the disclosure of the undeclared homosexuality" (both OED). I'm not sure whether the former meaning is widely used outside British English...)
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7 comments:
Both meanings are used in American English too.
I think one also needs to explain that 'gay' can mean 'homosexual' or (at least in youthful slang) '(figuratively) lame'. So it seems (to me) to be a double pun.
Yes, good point - thanks, Lynne.
I think we'd say "an office outing" rather than a "workplace" one, though. The workplace is, well, the place; the office can be the people as well.
Yes, I'd happily say 'office outing' too. In fact, it massively outnumbers 'workplace outing' in terms of Google results, even when the search is restricted to 'pages from the UK'.
Thinking further, I'd say that I'd interpret "need a workplace outing" to be an exposé rather than an excursion.
Never spoil a joke by explaining it!
The joke was good enough to spoil?!
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