Sod -- How Dirty Is It?

January 24, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston

I was taken aback when I noticed this license plate on the car in front of me.


I’ve posted before about an off-color vanity plate that sneaked through the NY DMV. That one was in French. But this is English – albeit British English.

I had thought that sod was a fairly offensive word. I had heard that it was short for sodomize, and I had heard phrases where it was interchangeable with fuck in meaning if not strength. “Sod all” to mean nothing; “sod off,” or “sod that.”

I sent the photo to a native informant, my colleague Faye Allard, born and raised in Walthamstow, East London, who natively informed me that on a scale of one to ten, sod would be about a 3. Maybe the DMV is more linguistically aware than I am.

Googling around, I discovered that there’s a Bjork song called “Sod Off.” Then, in a letter published a few days ago in the Times (UK), a woman wrote, “My runner's high has sod-all to do with endorphins.” And a Guardian interview with newscaster Jon Snow (“the moral anchor”) begins with Snow looking at his bicycle tire and exclaiming, “Sod it. I’ve got a puncture.”

So my sod-off shotgun misfired. Still, Faye got a kick out of the shot of the license plate.

3 comments:

  1. My first thought on seeing this was that the driver of this urban 4x4 was making a rather self aware and cynical comment against climate science and the green zeitgeist. Although perhaps they were thinking more along your lines...

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  2. A quick look online turned up

    1. A section of grass-covered surface soil held together by matted roots; turf.
    2. The ground, especially when covered with grass.

    To be honest, that is exactly what I thought when I saw the word sod...grass. In fact, I know of a sod farm. I lived in Rochester NY for almost 4 years, in Batavia, which is 1/2 way between Rochester and Buffalo on the Thruway, there is the Batavia Sod Farm.

    To be fair, the same online source goes on to say:

    1. A sodomite.
    2. A person regarded as obnoxious or contemptible.
    3. A fellow; a guy: "Poor sod, he almost got lucky for once" (Jack Higgins).

    So the sentence "poor sod he got sod in front" could very well make sense.

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  3. Woohoo. I've made the big time! Do you think I can make a living of being a native informer?!

    I'd share the rest of my English offensive word scale on here, but my mum might read it so I better hold off.

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