{"id":17218,"date":"2018-03-07T07:50:30","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T15:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/?p=17218"},"modified":"2018-03-07T07:50:30","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T15:50:30","slug":"blag-blagger-blagging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2018\/03\/07\/blag-blagger-blagging\/","title":{"rendered":"Blag, Blagger, Blagging"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>A word that I had seen before but wasn't really sure of the definition\u2014<i>blagging<\/i>. Dan Sabbagh and Ewen MacAskill, in an article headlined <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/media\/2018\/mar\/07\/i-was-nothing-more-than-a-common-thief-master-of-fleet-streets-dark-arts-reveals-trade-secrets\">&#8216;I was nothing more than a common thief&#8217;<\/a>, define it as <i>using subterfuge to obtain private information from banks, mortgage companies or utility firms<\/i>. But they don't get around to doing that until a dozen paragraphs and half a dozen uses in, curse them.\r\n<p>The OED doesn't really have that definition yet, it seems. It's a specific variant of what they do have, which is <i>to obtain or achieve by persuasive talk or plausible deception<\/i>. I wonder whether the more specific sense will stick, or will drive out the more general one.\r\n<p>The derivation is presumably from the French, but I wonder if perhaps the word <i>blagger<\/i> was taken up so rapidly (it seems) under the influence of <i>blaggard<\/i>, or <i>blackguard<\/i>. At any rate, it's a wonderfully contemptuous-sounding word, innit? <i>Blagger<\/i>. Nobody wants to be a <i>blagger<\/i> when they grow up.\r\n<p>Thanks,<br>-Ed.\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Does the US need a version of this one? Or can we just use the Brits, but in a funny accent?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-specific-words"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17219,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17218\/revisions\/17219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}