Bone and horn idle

I'm currently reading Books v. Cigarettes, a collection of essays by George Orwell. In the final essay, 'Such, Such Were the Joys', Orwell writes about his schooldays and recalls his old headmaster saying:

Go on, you little slacker! Go on, you idle, worthless little boy! The whole trouble with you is that you're bone and horn idle. You eat too much, that's why.

'Bone idle' I know, but I've never come across 'bone and horn idle' before. Googling it brings up only three results, one of which is 'Such, Such Were the Joys'!

However one of the other Google results suggests that 'bone and horn' (usually shortened to 'bone') is rhyming slang for 'born'.

That's plausible, but I have one reservation: 'bone' and 'born' are only one vowel sound apart (at least in my non-rhotic accent), so using one to stand in for the other seems a little... pointless.

In all the other examples of rhyming slang that I've come across, the original word and the replacement word are not at all similar-sounding. It must make for a more effective cryptolect, if nothing else.

What do you think?

Daily Mail: 'British Babel'

I'd like to write briefly about the lead story that the Daily Mail ran on its front page today. Here's the web version:

English is a second language for one in seven school pupils

The article seems to use the terms 'foreign language' and 'second language' almost interchangeably. This leads me to wonder how many school pupils there are in the United Kingdom who speak Welsh as a first language, for example, or Scottish Gaelic. After all, these aren't foreign languages to the UK.

I also spotted that one of the captions in the article distorts what is said in the body copy. The caption in question reads:

Schools Minister Jim Knight acknowledges there can be problems with high numbers of students whose English is not up to scratch

Whereas the body copy reads:

Schools minister Jim Knight has admitted that 'undoubtedly there can be problems' for schools with large numbers of non-English speakers.

There is, I should think, a great difference between being a non-English speaker and speaking English that is "not up to scratch".

Oh, and this made me smile:

Nelson Primary in East London faces daunting problems.

Only a quarter of its pupils are native English speakers and the rest use some 56 different languages.

I think that any student who can use 56 languages would be an asset to his or her school.

Finally, do read the comments that follow the Daily Mail's web version of the story. Scary, or what?

It's time for place for learning

The Daily Telegraph reports that a new primary school has banned the use of the word “school” in its title because it has “negative connotations”. Instead the school is to be known as “a place for learning” after its governors decided the word school is too “institutional”. The head teacher (“primary educational facilitator”, perhaps?) says: “We want this to be a place for family learning, where anyone can come... we wanted to de-institutionalise the place and bring the school [sic] closer to real life.”

Predictably, the Plain English Campaign has condemned the whole idea as “ridiculous”. It cites other recent examples of a “political correctness agenda” including “knowledge navigators” (teachers, though I think educational facilitator is more accurate and slightly less silly); the glorious “education centre nourishment assistants” (dinner ladies); “idea stores” (libraries); and an attempt to ban the word “inmates” for prisoners in case it offends them.

You really couldn’t make it up.


Telegraph.co.uk: Primary school drops word school from name...
The Engine Room: A library by any other name