Gardyloo!

[Dr. Goodword]

• Gardyloo! •

Pronunciation: gah(r)-di-lu • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Interjection

Meaning: Contrary to popular belief, the colorful expression gardyloo does not mean "protect the bathroom". Rather, it is an exclamatory warning alerting passers-by to dirty water (or worse) about to be dropped from a window above.

Notes: The second-floor dwellers in obscure parts of Scotland traditionally shout this warning before emptying their wash bowls and slop buckets onto the street below. It is a good word to know when strolling the by-ways of Kiltland even if it is of little use nowadays elsewhere.

In Play: Since the invention of indoor plumbing, the need for this interjection has contracted considerably. Moreover, since it is an interjection, it is used alone and not in sentences, making the creation of example sentences problematic. However, if you think dropping water bombs from upper-story windows will help cooler heads prevail in the world below, you might cover your actions by shouting, "Gardyloo!" before loosing your next aquagrenade.

Word History: Legend has it that French King Philippe Auguste (1180-1223) was drenched with the contents of a chamber pot while strolling the streets of Paris one afternoon. His reaction to this misfortune was to issue an edict directing all Parisians to exclaim, gare à l'eau! "look out for the water" before dumping sordid liquids from an upper-story window. While France eventually forgot this courtesy, the Scots took it more to heart, adding the magic of Scots English to the sophisticated French phrase, thereby creating this funny little exclamation. Or so the legend goes.

[bnjtokyo]

Actually, when visiting Katmandu a few years ago, I thought the local dialect would benefit from such an interjection. Many houses lacked indoor plumbing, the second floor overhung the street and filthy waste water flowed down the middle of the street along with sacred cows, dogs, chickens, goats and other domestic animals.

I never saw anyone pouring anything out of a second story window, but I would not have been surprised.

[Eileen Opiolka]

Greetings from Scotland!

French garde à l'eau translated means "beware of the water." (Wiktionary)
This is the traditional etymology prevalent, I believe, here in Scotland, but I am open to correction. And as far as I am aware, it was only commonly heard in Edinburgh.

Eileen

[LukeJavan8]

Great word to add to water balloon fights on a hot summer
day.

[BevH]

Where I work, a small group of us typically walk during our lunch hour at a nearby housing development. There are a number of people who live in this development who are dog-owners. They of course walk their dogs in the development. There is at least one owner who is NOT conscientious enough to clean up after their dog. So inevitably when we walk, we have to watch out for these "doggy bombs" and shout a warning to each other when a turd looms ahead. We have decided to extend the use of this lovely interjection by slightly modifying its meaning to include "dog turd ahead" - the use of Gardyloo is alive and well!

[LukeJavan8]

Welcome BevH



Great idea.

[Dr. Goodword]

Slava raised this question: "Is the gare correct, or should there have been a "d" in it, making it garde? If it is correct, where did the "d" come from?"

My response was: "Gare is the imperiative of garer "beware" in French. Garder means "look after" not "look out for", but there may have been some confusion with this verb. According to the OED it is 'apparently < a pseudo-French phrase gare de l'eau "beware of the water"; in correct French it would be 'gare l'eau'."

[Slava]

Thank you for the explanation of whence the "d". I would venture to say that my qualms about the word's history come from the fencing/swordplay phrase, "En garde!" Or is that, too, incorrect, and the "d" is added superfluously by English? Is it there and silent, or should it not be there at all?

[Perry Lassiter]

The swordplay obviously means "on guard!"

[Dr. Goodword]

Did you know that French borrowed guard from Middle English ward? Old French had no [w] so they chose the closest sound to it, which was [gw], spelled GU. English then promptly borrowed the word back with the [g] sound and a new meaning.

[Slava]

So, does this mean that "En garde" has a silent "d"? Or, in French, should it not be there?

Should it be pronounced "en gard" or "en gar"?

[Perry Lassiter]

Probably we should always say en gwar, and likely gward, esp here amongs LA Cajuns!

[misterdoe]

Is it possible the phrase came to be during Scotland's Norman period? That would easily explain how it became common there without catching on in France.

The Normans were a landgrabbing bunch, probably since all inheritances went to the oldest son. So lots of second sons (and others) migrated southeast from Normandy, settling in the Veneto region of Italy, resulting in the Venetian language being more similar to French than to "standard" (read Tuscan) Italian.

Then they answered the call for the Crusades, even making some of their own, supposedly for the Church. But having Norman rulers in the Aegean, Anatolia, and the Levant wasn't the Church's idea, it was the Normans'.