Tuesday, October 27, 2009

arga warga revisited

Courtesy Janet Reid, MOMA's Warhol Not Wanted letter on the Rejectionist.

1 comment:

Mithridates said...

speaking of arga warga, did you know this existed?

http://www.graphesthesia.com/rw/index.html

the entry for arga warga is interesting:

"An exclamation meaning that someone has met with a bad fate ('uh-oh'). Hoban explains it as 'onomatopoeia suggestive of gobbling-up' [EE], but he is also surely familiar with Baba Yaga, the ravenous old witch of Russian fairy tales. It also recalls argy-bargy, a Britishism meaning an argument or brawl. [EB] And: a warg is of course a wolf (Germanic—see Tolkien). Arga, in a northern Germanic language, makes insulting reference to a man supposed to be effeminate and a catamite. [SLK]"

--not sure what brawls or catamites have to do with hoban's explanation, but well.