Comments on: Colourful Language: 1. Yellow Perils

By: George

George — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 01:40:05 +0000

Oh, and “yellow journalism”, said to go back to the “Yellow Kid” comic strip created to advertise the color printing of one of the New York papers….

By: George

George — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 18:10:12 +0000

There is also the American usage “yellow-dog Democrat”, one who would vote for a yellow dog if it ran on the Democratic ticket. The term was mostly southern, though the intense party loyalty was found elsewhere.

By: Worm

Worm — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 18:05:17 +0000

For more true stories about dodgy limehouse chinamen and their opium dens, have a search on the excellent nickel in the machine blog that we feature here on The Dabbler.

By: Gaw

Gaw — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 14:24:44 +0000

I must have been about five years old and my parents let me stay up whilst a Fu Manchu film played on the telly. Unfortunately, we visited a Chinese restaurant for lunch shortly thereafter. I screamed my head off as they tried to drag me across the threshold; I recall a Chinese waiter attempting to coax me in by holding out a cracker and my shrinking away from his friendly, smiling face. After much struggle I was seated but whimpered throughout. Sax Rohmer, crazy name, crazy guy!

By: malty

malty — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 13:51:18 +0000

Talking of cowardly custards, there was a term commonly used for people who told tales, ‘toot’. A primary teacher I knew, sitting at her desk when up strode little Billie, the boy she had reported to the beak for some piece of outrageousness. Standing next to her he drew himself up to all of four foot ten, glowered and exclaimed “toot”, then stomped back to his desk. Ain’t kids wonderfull.

By: malty

malty — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 13:41:15 +0000

Often wondered where Donovan got that from, now thanks to Jonathon, we know. Have this image of the twerp, in Pennebaker’s sublime movie, ingratiating all over the joint, him and Allan Price.

Ah said yeah yeah, that’s what ah said, ah said yeah yeah

Proof that Jarrow Grammar School was pants in the English dept.

By: Brit

Brit — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 13:19:12 +0000

I’ve always thought of ‘yellow= coward’ as a US thing, specifically cowboys in westerns. Even more specifically, John Wayne saying “Yer yellar…”

Donovan, meanwhile, was called Mellow Yellow (quite rightly).

By: Brit

Brit — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 13:16:46 +0000

JG himself has written on that coinage of 'Hun' on this very site.

By: George

George — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 12:34:41 +0000

Didn’t Kaiser Wilhem II coin “yellow peril”, or rather “gelbe Gefahr”? (Quite the wordsmith: he also came up with “Hun” for German.) And there was an airplane on which a generation of U.S. Navy pilots were trained, known as “the yellow peril”.