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Hunt the parcel — 5 Comments

  1. You think you’ve got problems with parcels? I don’t even have an address here. I have to tell everyone who I order from to put my mobile number on the address label so the delivery company can call me to say I have a parcel, or it just gets returned to sender. I also never know if it will come to the Post Office or to one of the couriers. I’ve had bank cards and driving licences returned to sender because I didn’t know they’d arrived in time. I’ve even had stuff returned to sender when I’ve been away and called the courier to say I’ll be back in a few days to collect, and they’ve sent it back anyway because it’s DHL policy! Cunts! I’ve cultivated my postman, who now has my number in his phone, so that’s sorted, and the main courier has my number in their computer database, so that’s sorted, but the other courier isn’t up to speed yet.

    No matter, I’m at my new place soon, where I actually have an address, so all that malakeas (literal translation – wankery) will be in the past. I hope!

    • Whenever ordering something I always tell ’em to put my number on the parcel as nine times out of ten they get lost.  On a couple of occasions they have passed my place several times before refusing to try again, at which point I have to drive to them [usually half way up the mountain].

      Just to make like a lot easier, a family moved in up the road.  Same surname, same first initial and just to confuse things further, they gave their house a name almost identical to mine – a sort of Hard Rumbles Manor type of name. 

      With Herself and her fondness for online shopping though most of the courier companies know us quite well by now.  I’m on first name terms with one or two.

      I wonder if there is some kind of etymological connection between “malakeas” and “malarkey”?

  2. I wonder if there is some kind of etymological connection between “malakeas” and “malarkey”?

    I just Googled ‘malarkey, word origin’, and interestingly came up with: Malarkey might even be from modern Greek: “μαλακός (malakos) soft, or its derivative μαλακία (malakia).”

    http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/10/12/162791655/whats-all-this-malarkey-about-malarkey

    See also: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1500337?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

    Now μαλακός does indeed mean ‘soft’, but in the vernacular, μαλάκας (note the shift of the accent also) means ‘wanker’, and is in common usage. In fact, it is without doubt the most common vulgarity used in Greek, and is used by all and sundry on a regular basis.

    It’s quite possible that these learned etymologists, looking through their Greek dictionaries, were quite unaware of the popular slang used by Greeks, and so confused the ‘soft / wanker’ connection.

    Language really is a quite fascinating subject.

  3. Or the learned etymologists knew exactly what they were doing and decided to take the piss knowing that most of us (with the exception of this esteemed blog’s author and contributors) wouldn’t think of looking it up! 

    Does the postie play music while he’s doing the deliveries?  I was thinking maybe he does and when the music stops he has to get rid of a parcel as quickly as possible in the most original place?

     

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