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Anonymous Posted 11 years ago
Grammar
"Game as a pairtridge!"
Dear experts,
I would be very happy if you helped me with the phrase in the subject line. It's a quotation from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story entitled "The Croxley Master". The context is this: two boxers are fighting on a ring and, when one of them starts losing, his fan (the publican) shouts the phrase in question.
From what I've found on the Internet, "pairtridge" is the obsolete and colloquial Scottish for "partridge". Therefore, my only guess is that the intended meaning is something along the lines of "finish him as a partridge", though I'm not at all sure about the grammar: whether "game" here is used as a noun or a verb...
Please help!
Many thanks in advance,
Max
I would be very happy if you helped me with the phrase in the subject line. It's a quotation from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story entitled "The Croxley Master". The context is this: two boxers are fighting on a ring and, when one of them starts losing, his fan (the publican) shouts the phrase in question.
From what I've found on the Internet, "pairtridge" is the obsolete and colloquial Scottish for "partridge". Therefore, my only guess is that the intended meaning is something along the lines of "finish him as a partridge", though I'm not at all sure about the grammar: whether "game" here is used as a noun or a verb...
Please help!
Many thanks in advance,
Max
Top answer
e. shot for sport or food.
- e.
- shot for sport or food.
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3 Answers
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I don't know the expression at all, but it seems to be a punning expression using "game" in the sense of "eager and willing to do something new or challenging" (definition from Oxford Dictionaries) and also playing on the fact that a partridge is a game bird, i.e. shot for sport or food.
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Many thanks for that refreshing look, GPY! I must confess this interpretation didn't cross my mind, but it seems that it's still not the end of the story... What a pity the author is not around us to shed some light on the question...
Best wishes,
Max
Best wishes,
Max
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Anonymous"Game as a pairtridge!"I agree with GPY. "game" signifies "ready, willing, and able" and suggests "fit" perhaps as well. In modern American English we might say "He's up for it!"
I also agree that there is a pun. The partridge is a game bird.
CJ
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