Hi Harry
My first thought was that it either meant "going on a bender" ie going
out and getting drunk, or having a big strop. The latter is confirmed by
good old Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_(slang)
/In England, the term is used as a pejorative slang term to describe
anyone of apparent mental slowness, especially by children (derived from
the character of the same name, played by Paul Henry
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Henry_%28actor%29> in the soap opera
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera> //Crossroads
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossroads_%28TV_series%29>). It is also
used to describe a person in a fit of rage or having a tantrum as in
"He's having a benny"./
A google search for "having a benny" reveals this and many similar examples.
The urban dictionary also reveals a number of other meanings
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=benny
I guess this demonstrates the power of the internet over the BNC as a
corpus.....
Incidentally, there's no wikipedia entry for "numpty".
I must admit I would consider numpty to be on the fringe of the nonPC
terms, but then you can say the same about pretty much any of its
synonyms......
Diana
Harold Somers wrote:
> A colleague has just emailed me suggesting that the word "numpty" has
> become non-PC because of its association with Downs syndrome. I've never
> made that association ... Has anyone else?
>
> A trawl of the standard "references" suggests that numpty is a Scottish
> slang word (meaning 'idiot' or 'incompetent person') and is being
> considered fro inclusion in the next edition of the OED; but
> interestingly its total absence from the BNC suggests either that it has
> only recently entered the language, and/or that Scottish English is
> under-represented in the BNC.
>
> Would I be right in thinking that the word is entirely unknown in AmE?
>
> On a similar theme, I was thinking about the word "benny", a slang term
> which had a brief life in BrE. With the same meaning as numpty, its
> etymology is a character in a soap (Crossroads I think) called Benny who
> was "intellectually challenged". I seem to remember a news article
> during the Falklands War in which soldiers were being admonished because
> their slang word for Falkland Islanders was "bennies".
>
> "A benny" occurs twice in the BNC, both times in the same source (KCE -
> a conversation recorded by `Helena' (PS0EB)) as follows:
>
> KCE 7007 so she had a bit of a benny it was
> KCE 7260 I hadn't had a benny for a few days actually
>
> Helena also talks about "bennies":
> KCE 7258 Not that I ever have major bennies or anything
>
> I'm guessing that here she means a "benzedrine" tablet, though that
> interpretation doesn't really fit the syntax (a bit of a benny, major
> bennies). Anyone any idea what a benny is in this context? (Perhaps the
> surrounding text can help - what is the topic of the conversation?).
>
> There's one other occurrence of "bennies" in the BNC, from "Skinhead" by
> Nick Knight, the meaning of which I think is "Ben Sherman shirts"
> ARP 213 Most skinhead girls, sometimes called rennes, would wear
> bennies, button-fly red tags, white socks and penny loafers or monkey
> boots.
>
>
> Harold Somers
>
>
>
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