Words and Phrases.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20447, 27 October 1934, Page 10

Words and Phrases.

■yyHEN a Member of Parliament described

a person on Thursday as “ a kind of Nosey Parker ” nobody was in any doubt as to his meaning, though the description may not be used in polite society. The Oxford Dictionary says nothing about Nosey Parker, but Ernest Weekley says there is a slang “ nose,” meaning an informer, a copper’s nark (from the Romany nak, nose), so he conjectures that the character belongs to thieves’ slang. According, however, to an amateur philologist:

There is no mystery about the origin of the term Nosey Parker. It was born in the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth, when the original Parker was her first Archbishop of Canterbury. . . . Mathew Parker was a human ferret. He lived his life prying into other people’s affairs, but it was during his metro-political visitation to the province of Canterbury that the long archiepiscopal nose of Mathew Parker gave him the name that still describes the persistently inquisitive.

The mention of Nosey Parker suggested to Weekley a digression on the curious additions which the Army and Navy regularly give to the commoner types of surnames. From a long list the following may be quoted: Aggie Weston (who was the sailors’ friend), Betsy Gay, Blanco White, Fanny Adams (also a naval name for tinned meat, from the victim of an early trunk murder), Brigham Young, Charlie Peace, Dolly Grey, Nobby Clarke, Doughy Baker, Dusty Rhodes/ Johnnie Walker, Lackery Wood (from lakri, the Hindustani name for wood). Smokey Holmes, Smudger Smith, Spokey Wheeler'and Spud Murphy.

But none of these bring us nearer to the derivation of Nosey Parker. TOUCHSTONE.