TOPICS OF THE DAY
Word Products of IP ar “ The war has thrown up at least one pretty word, ‘ sireen.’ Mr Churchill’s Jesterpo runs it close and breaks the dread syllables Gestapo into a grin; but Jesterpo remains individual to Mr Churchill. Nazzies, another favourite with the politicians, I like, too, and the German Minister of Propaganda, whose name has become anything from Gobbles to Jibbles, seems finally marked down for the farmyard. It is a true instinct that draws out stings and smashes the names of your enemies to play with. But sireen is in a class by itself. No minister of mispronunciation wafted it over the air: it came bubbling from the housewife, the milkman and the bus conductor. Probably the existence of names like Ireen, shrilled for generations, will account for its adoption. There at any rate it is, a lovely word, which leaves siren to its old meanings.”—Mr G. W. Stone, in the New Statesman, London-
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WT19410317.2.25
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Waikato Times, Volume 128, Issue 21372, 17 March 1941, Page 4
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160TOPICS OF THE DAY Waikato Times, Volume 128, Issue 21372, 17 March 1941, Page 4
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