All my life I have thought that "dam" was a peculiar spelling of "damn" and, while "I don't give a dam" was a bit obscure, it made some vague sense to me. Probably something to do with tinkers. (This was fed by the phrase "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," where I have never seen the spelling as "dam.") But education is as long as life. There is an old Indian-English dictionary called "Hobson-Jobson" with a collection of words absorbed into English from India. It describes itself in its sub-title: "A glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms etymological, historical, geographical and discursive. By Colonel Henry Yule and AC Burnell." Hobson-Jonson itself is one of these: "an Anglo-Saxon version of the wailings of the Mahommedans as they beat their breasts in the procession of the Moharram - 'Ya Hasan! Ya Hosain!'"
Stoppard once wrote an exchange using such words in his play "India Ink."
Flora: "While having tiffin on the veranda of my bungalow I spilled kedgeree on my dungarees and had to go to the gymkhana in my pyjamas looking like a coolie."
Nirad: "I was buying chutney in the bazaar when a thug who had escaped from the chokey ran amok and killed a box-wallah for his loot, creating a hullabaloo and landing himself in the mulligatawny."
Back to "dam." The dictionary defines it as: "Originally an actual copper coin. Damri is a common enough expression for the infinitesimal in coin, and one has often heard a Briton in India say: 'No, I won't give a dumree!' with but a vague notion what a damri meant."
That is the etymology of "dam." But Yule and Burnell go further.
"And this leads to the suggestion that a like expression, often heard from coarse talkers in England as well as in India, originated in the latter country, and that whatever profanity there may be in the animus, there is none in the etymology, when such an one blurts out 'I don't care a dam!' in other words, 'I don't care a brass farthing!'"
50 words from India:
Sources: Hobson-Jobson, Oxford English Dictionary
Stoppard once wrote an exchange using such words in his play "India Ink."
Back to "dam." The dictionary defines it as: "Originally an actual copper coin. Damri is a common enough expression for the infinitesimal in coin, and one has often heard a Briton in India say: 'No, I won't give a dumree!' with but a vague notion what a damri meant."
That is the etymology of "dam." But Yule and Burnell go further.
"And this leads to the suggestion that a like expression, often heard from coarse talkers in England as well as in India, originated in the latter country, and that whatever profanity there may be in the animus, there is none in the etymology, when such an one blurts out 'I don't care a dam!' in other words, 'I don't care a brass farthing!'"
50 words from India:
- A - atoll, avatar
- B - bandana, bangle, bazaar, Blighty, bungalow
- C - cashmere, catamaran, char, cheroot, cheetah, chintz, chit, chokey, chutney, cot, cummerbund, curry
- D - dinghy, doolally, dungarees
- G - guru, gymkhana
- H - hullabaloo
- J - jodhpur, jungle, juggernaut, jute
- K - khaki, kedgeree
- L - loot
- N - nirvana
- P - pariah, pashmina, polo, pukka, pundit, purdah, pyjamas
- S - sari, shampoo, shawl, swastika
- T - teak, thug, toddy, typhoon
- V - veranda
- Y - yoga
Sources: Hobson-Jobson, Oxford English Dictionary
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