Beast Police: a rant.

A policeman's lot is not a happy one, says the old song, and it's certainly true that despite all the work the police forces of the world do to keep us all safe (yes, I do realise that some of you will be laughing mockingly) the public isn't shy about hurling insults at the boys in...well, they used to be boys in blue round here, but nowadays they tend to come in luminous green.

Scum, Pigs, Bœufs (French, because of their supposedly blank stare) Chimps (Completely Hopeless In Most Policing Situations), Chien (dog) Filth, Fuzz, Plod (Enid Blyton character), Moosor (Russian, garbage), Rati (Argentinian, from word for rat), Schmier (Swiss, grease (as in corruption)).

Hey, but what was that about fuzz? That's an odd one. It's not even obviously an insult. Where did that come from?

Well, the common view is that it refers to the static interference to be heard on police radios, but a sentence in the Telegraph online of May 14 may provide a different explanation. It describes a police investigation into a man who had claimed that various very high-ranking officials in British life had been members of a murderous ring of child abusers.

The man, the report tells us

was now the suspect as police officers pawed over the allegations with a fine-tooth comb.

Well, if the police have paws then I think we can see where the word fuzz came from, can't we?



Word To Use Today: paw. This word comes from the Old French powe, paw or fist. Before that, no one's sure, but there's a lovely German word Pfote which might be related to it.