Hmmm - I don't think 'wing-nut' has peculated (down/up/over) into British english. I remember it being used to describe kids with big ears when I was at school, but that is a different story.
I didn't 'get' the precise meaning of wing nut until I read this thread. I was going to tell the story of the woman who wanted to stop the gulf war (before last...) by getting activists to wrap tape round TV ariels and stop the rays from Bush Senior and John Major corrupting us all. The problem with that was that none of the (mostly Brit Trots) knew what to do and so stared at their feet.
The nearest Britishism I have heard for lefties who are just so vociferously on-their-line that they are almost a parody of themselves is 'hack' or 'head banger' but none of these quite point derision as wing-nut seems to.
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english wing nuts
Date: 2004-09-15 03:27 am (UTC)I didn't 'get' the precise meaning of wing nut until I read this thread. I was going to tell the story of the woman who wanted to stop the gulf war (before last...) by getting activists to wrap tape round TV ariels and stop the rays from Bush Senior and John Major corrupting us all. The problem with that was that none of the (mostly Brit Trots) knew what to do and so stared at their feet.
The nearest Britishism I have heard for lefties who are just so vociferously on-their-line that they are almost a parody of themselves is 'hack' or 'head banger' but none of these quite point derision as wing-nut seems to.