Bear with me. I often hear the phrase, “Fuckin’ Heathens.” But does anybody who utters that phrase really know what they’re saying?
Any learned explanation would be most appreciated and also if you’d like to add your own examples that would make this thread all the more useful for me.
Kaisfatdad says
Good question! I tried googling the phrase along with the word etymology. but got no results.
Could heathens be part of a TV or radio character’s catchphrase? Blinkin heathens or suchlike?
Martin Hairnet says
I suppose many sayings eventually become detached from their origins. If you remove its religious connotations, heathen can take on a more generic meaning: a breaker of rules, lacking respect for traditional order, arrogant and iconoclastic. There’s no absolute logical extension from those meanings to outright idiocy – the world needs iconoclasts, after all – but when folks use that phrase today, aren’t they simply judging people to be idiots or irritants, of a particularly virulent kind?
Lodestone of Wrongness says
I can honestly say apart from watching Celtic v Rangers sometime around 1763 I have never heard the phrase “Fuckin’ Heathens”
On the other hand there isn’t a day goes past without me hearing “Well coat my mackerel in Bird’s Custard and send the bill to Angelo Dundee”.
Mike_H says
“Well ah’ll be dipped!”
Vulpes Vulpes says
Twang says
Funnily enough we watched the Tin Tin movie last night and talked about how you gave Twang Jr his first Tin Tin book – “The Black Island” – he’s got almost all of them now and recently re-read them all in order (teenage boys are nothing if not obsessive). We’ve got a few en Frog in France too, which are great. There’s a lovely Tin Tin exhibition an hour from us in the grounds of a chateau which was the model for Marlinspike. Good work @vulpes-vulpes.
retropath2 says
I have The Black Island in gaelic.
nigelthebald says
Afterword T-shirt.
salwarpe says
I’ve had that, too – île noire à l’ail. Delicious, but it does tend to repeat on you in the morning.
Oh…
Vulpes Vulpes says
Cheers, @Twang. I still have my collection here, in the music room. One of these days I’ll have the CDs sorted out sufficiently to allow me to read ’em all again. Reading them all in order is the mark of a serious afficionado, and something to be applauded.
MC Escher says
You know that famous phrase “the way of all flesh”?
Do you know what the full original quote is?
“She went the way of all flesh. That is to say, into the kitchen.”
Sublime to ridiculous in one fell swoop. This is why we have editors.
Gatz says
What’s the source? Samuel Butler’s novel was published in the 1880s and I’ve always assumed the title had a biblical source but it seems he just made it up.
MC Escher says
It was a throwaway comment on a music blog, not a PhD thesis 🙂 but here you are anyway:
The Pan Dictionary of Famous Quotations, 1989 ed. John Webster 158?-1625?
Source is “Birdlime”.
I did quote it slightly wrong, many apologies. The original is “I saw him even now going the way of all flesh, that is to say into the kitchen.”
Tiggerlion says
Fuckin’ Heathens? Isn’t that two non religious people having sexual intercourse? Or one or more religious person or persons having sexual intercource with more than one non-religious people, either sequentially or simultaneously?
Mrbellows says
That’s kinda warped!
Tiggerlion says
Thank you.
Junglejim says
I’ve always understood ‘heathens’ to literally mean ‘people of the heath’ – that is, those from a Christian perspective who are outside the church. They are deemed to be uncivilised and can be found physically outside or beyond the ‘settled’ world of organised towns and villages.
A slightly different emphasis is that they find and worship their ‘gods’ (plural as opposed to the Christian singular) out in nature itself- out on the heath, in the wilds. They are considered essentially pagan – a throwback to pre-Christian days who are therefore unsaved and spirituality feral.
From a civilised angle, they are reckoned to be uncontrollable and wild, and their lack of discipline is seen as a threat to order, in society and in the world as a whole. That take soon becomes synonymous with lack of respectability.
References to this world view can be found in Shakespeare’s ‘ King Lear’ when the mad king is unhinged, he lives out in the wind & rain & is subjected to the aggression of nature. The same world view pops up in Thomas Hardy’s novels, with the people of the heath seen as wild and elemental, whose ways may have a certain allure but who are essentially agents of chaos.
Mrbellows says
Excellent explanation. Makes perfect sense.
Junglejim says
👍😀
Freddy Steady says
@junglejim
Excellent, thanks!
Martin Hairnet says
I just remembered this from my ‘O’ Level English Lit. Shakespeare: Macbeth Act 1, Scene 1
Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches
First Witch
When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch
When the hurlyburly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.
Third Witch
That will be ere the set of sun.
First Witch
Where the place?
Second Witch
Upon the heath.
Third Witch
There to meet with Macbeth.
Martin Hairnet says
The inevitable tangential music link arrives.
Vulpes Vulpes says