• We see incredibly creative exercises in the art of misleading euphemism: 'debt relief' and 'off-market transaction'.
• We see a interesting term of art, HIPC.
• There's evocative use of regular words, mulligan and legerdemain.

Tony Blair visits Bush today to make his case for new G-7 aid to the world's poor, particularly Africa. But Mr. Blair's proposal amounts to a mulligan for borrowers and the multilateral institutions that lent money so wrecklessly.

Some 38 nations qualify as "highly indebted poor countries," or HIPCs. Despite $144 billion in bad loans, lenders stopped expecting repayment years ago. In fact, since 1985 the HIPCs have been regular recipients of new funds to cover their debt service so the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund can boast – preposterously – that they've never made a bad loan. These lenders have also figured out that they can wring more foreign aid out of donor countries if they call this process "debt relief." So rather than writing down their worthless assets the way normal banks do with their bad commercial loans, these lenders now want the G-7 to cover their losses, including interest due.

The free money crowd has come up with an accounting scheme worthy of Enron. The idea is for the IMF to "sell" the gold currently on its books at $52 per ounce in an "off-market transaction" for its market value of about $430 an ounce, and then buy it back at the same price. This legerdemain will allow the IMF to book a "profit" and suddenly look rich.

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
I'd never heard of mulligan.

quote:

Mulligan Stew

quote:

Cat,
You can see we are all interested in your love life.. and wanting to protect you.

quote:

My son plays Magic, but I have never understood the desire. Perhaps you can explain it better than he can.

quote:

(now get back to work - I don't want to get you into trouble!)

quote:

Originally posted by KHC:
Thank you, Cat and mutualdesire on your postings re: Magic, The Gathering. My son loved reading it! and now I know so much more than he could ever tell me..

I can't open Tinman's link to Mulligan Stew..

quote:

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20010301

Warren Thompson wrote:

Kindly provide definitions for mulligan as in mulligan stew and take a mulligan.

Actually, Warren, mulligan has a whole stew full of meanings. The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang lists seven. The first is 'an Irish person'. It came into print around 1875, and it was often used derisively. Next, we have 'Irish whiskey', followed by 'a stew made of odds and ends of vegetables and meats', then 'a logging vehicle used to bring a work crew to meals', a police officer or guard', 'a second chance to play a golf shot' and, finally, 'any unexpected second chance'. This last meaning came late on the scene; the HDAS says it first appeared in print in 1996. By the way, the Oxford English Dictionary says that mulligan should begin with a capital letter when referring to the freebee golf shot. Other sources do not agree.

What most sources do agree upon is that the word probably came from someone named Mulligan. We're talking about different Mulligans, of course. We can assume it wasn't the same Mulligan who created (or made popular) the renowned, belly-satisfying stew as the Mulligan who first bent the rules and made life joyous for duffers forevermore--and so on. In any case, Mulligan was, and is, a common Irish name. The OED's first citation for the "stew" mulligan is 1904; the first for the "golf" mulligan is 1946.

Let's tee off. The Historical Dictionary of Golfing Terms tells me that a mulligan is 'permission by a player (forbidden under the rules) to an opponent to replay a misplayed shot', but has no clue as to the word's origin. I had much better luck with Language of Sport, which states that the word, or phrase, is named after Canadian golfer David Mulligan. "In the late 1920s," LOS says, "Mulligan, who provided transportation to the golf course for his regular foursome, was given a second ball after mishitting his drive off the first tee with hands still numb from driving over a particularly bumpy bridge at the course entrance." I called Karen Hewson, Director of the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame and Museum to see if there was anything to this. She allowed that she knew the story well but had no official records concerning Mr. Mulligan himself. She retrieved a copy of History of Golf in Canada. "In this book," she said, "Mulligan's drive is very dramatic." The foursome's drive to the country club culminated, Hewson read to me, "in a frightening passage across a bridge that was built not for cars but for horse-drawn wagons. Since they were teeing off only moments after the very difficult drive, the driver [Mulligan, of course] was usually in a mild state of shock." His friends, presumably grateful they didn't have to drive over that bridge themselves, were more than happy to grant Mulligan a second chance.

Mulligan stew, which is also simply called mulligan is, according to A Dictionary of Americanisms, "said to have originated among tramps." That makes perfect sense, since it's a hodge-podge of ingredients. The DOA cites a 1926 book called You Can't Win: "He's crazy as a bed bug and the best 'mulligan' maker on the road." In case you find yourself on the road with little means, here's a recipe. The Dictionary of American Regional English says that among loggers a mulligan was the railroad car (usually the caboose) that brought them out their noontime meals: "The term referred to the mulligan soup which was served." It appears to have originated in California.

Whatever the truth of the matter, golfers, and lovers of good stew, have several resourceful, anonymous Mulligans to thank.

Richard

quote:

Ah, so according to the mavens, Mulligan stew is an Americanism. No wonder I didn't recognise it.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:While "Mulligan" stew seemed to originate among tramps, according to Tinman's site, it didn't really indicate where it originated.

quote:

I franky suspect it originated either in the UK or in Canada where the other references to Mulligan originated...

quote:

From the article I would assume it was named after a hobo, probably in Calfornia, named Mulligan.

quote:

An idle shiftless wandering workman, ranking scarcely above the tramp’ (Funk)."
1889 Ellensburgh (Wash.) Capital 28 Nov. 2/2 The tramp has changed his name, or rather had it changed for him, and now he is a ‘Hobo’.

quote:

Hobos generally apply the term hobo only to itinerant people who work. In contrast, they define a tramp as a itinerant person who does not work, and supports himself by other means e.g. begging or scavenging. Alternatively, a tramp is somebody who prefers to walk or hitchhike rather than ride the rails. A bum is a homeless person who neither travels nor works. Both are terms of derision within the hobo community.

quote:

Using “literary license,” Douglas wrote three memoirs in which the American public was led to believe that he had suffered from polio as an infant and was raised by an impoverished, widowed mother whose life savings were stolen by the family attorney. He further chronicled his time as a poverty-stricken student sleeping in a tent while attending Whitman College, serving as a private in the Army during World War I, and “riding the rods” like a hobo to attend Columbia Law School. Murphy's research reveals for the first time that none of these claims were true, but rather were Douglas' attempts to persuade the public that he should have been president, like his hero Franklin D. Roosevelt.

quote:

Originally posted by tinman:
From the article I would assume it was named after a hobo, probably in Calfornia, named Mulligan.

Tinman