Originally published at: Do you know these adventurer's terms: charisma, chutzpah, clean one's clock, and (my favorite) clobberin' time? | Boing Boing
…
2 Likes
Clobberin?
1 Like
The 19c British use of clobber referring to clothing is a puzzle, although if it involved the Peaky Blinders, why not both?
2 Likes
Chutzpah was a Player Character attribute on the old Paranoia RPG back in my day (may still be, in newer editions, dunno). I always remembered that the rulebook I had defined it as “the quality of someone who kills both parents then pleads for mercy because they’re an orphan.”
4 Likes
The idiom clean one’s clock seems to have originally been a piece of US railroad jargon, meaning “bring the train to a sudden stop” – i.e. by applying the airbrakes, thus “cleaning” (resetting) the train’s air gauge (clock).
I think the railroad idiom was “clean the clock,” referring to the sudden braking and the resetting of the gauges. The earliest use of “clean <a person’s> clock” is in 1908 and seems to have evolved separately, with a round face being like a clock. Around the same time “Fix <a person’s> clock” meant roughly the same thing–to defeat them thoroughly.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
