Geriatric OE

The weekly musing of a couple of Kiwis on their geriatric OE in The UK






Wednesday, 12 September 2012

Words...and words...



What a palaver. That is an interesting word isn’t it. Hmm I wonder what its origin is. Give me a mo I’m off on a tangent. 

[C18: from Portuguese palavra  talk, from Latin parabola parable
palaver
1733 (implied in palavering), "talk, conference, discussion," sailors' slang, from Port. palavra "word, speech, talk," traders' term for "negotiating with the natives" in W.Africa, metathesis of L.L. parabola "speech, discourse," from L. parabola "comparison." Meaning "idle talk" first recorded 1748.

OK, I’m back again.  Can you tell that I am interested in words and language?

Now back to that palaver.
A few entries ago wrote about the hassles The man and I were having trying to get identifying information verified so that we could change the address for our NZ bonus bonds.
Today The man and I left work early armed with the originals and photocopies of our certificates, passport’s, bank statements with our addresses on them. We took them to the bank where we are customers, and after much explaining ourselves, now have all the copies stamped and verified. In the morning I will post them off back to NZ, so fingers crossed it will be enough. I’ll keep you posted. 

Yesterday I received a copy of a marriage certificate I had ordered, of my paternal great grandparents. I already knew their names and that of their parents and grandparents. What I was hoping for was the name of grt granny’s father. I have that now. I also now had an address. I could not locate this ancestor on the 1871 census. I found him on the 1861 and the 1881, but not the one in the middle. So I sent an enquiry to a website I belong to and asked if someone could search that particular census by address. Unfortunately a totally different family were residing there.  
Hmmm. One of the respondents pointed out a young man with the same name living with his grandparents and a younger brother Oswald. Pity about that as the brother was Donald.
Hang on a mo.
Take another look at that 1871 census. The transcription said Donald, but when I looked carefully at the census itself what was actually written down was…Oswald.
 That'll teach me to not accept what is written in the transcription until I have actually looked at eh entry itself.
Tah -dah.
So it really was them living with their grandparents.Another little link in the chain...

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