{"id":23194,"date":"2023-12-07T16:45:10","date_gmt":"2023-12-07T16:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=23194"},"modified":"2023-12-07T16:45:11","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T16:45:11","slug":"shopping-for-grasshoppers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=23194","title":{"rendered":"Shopping for Grasshoppers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever been <strong>grassed up<\/strong> or <strong>grassed on<\/strong>?<\/p>\n<p>In the UK, to <strong>grass someone up<\/strong> or to <strong>grass on someone<\/strong> means to betray them to the police or other authorities, and a <strong>grass<\/strong> is an informer who betrays a group (of criminals or other ne&#8217;er-do-wells) to the police. It\u2019s also used to mean telling on someone to a figure of authority, such as a boss, teacher or parent [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/grass#English\">source<\/a>]. <\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/132295270@N07\/48772451667\/in\/photolist-2hiRyF6-2mH7hst-2m5oTxA-XtgWiU-XtvNih-5AZ2SA-2gqyuby-5AUMqp-LUVVes-2gMi7iu-nC4vmG-2oB6nai-Yosn2n-arEScu-2jG5kwv-23gueac-fhZabV-2EiAoQ-2oe96eN-cdiDcb-85QhYt-2guPxT5-5aTdQt-F162ez-7Tn8r2-7TqoB5-7pgaWN-2nQWegy-4J5zex-3127k5-7Tqo5Y-fetNvH-cL3V7-2mbAizb-2oSFej8-7Tn8gv-hzGeHD-d6umVW-3eSii2-rRNmTZ-2jKhwpr-3eSiWr-Svwrs-7Gbqs6-axQATD-HRA8rX-4Hyz6W-a8FBZK-3YFPZ-2gBGjww\" title=\"Grasshoppers\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/48772451667_7593f2c93b_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"439\" alt=\"Grasshoppers\"\/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong>Grass<\/strong> in these senses is probably a shortening of <strong>grasshopper<\/strong>, which is rhyming slang for <strong>copper<\/strong> (police officer), as in someone who will inform on you to the police, and\/or rhyming slang for <strong>shopper<\/strong>, i.e. one who \u2018shops\u2019 you to the authorities [<a href=\"https:\/\/owlcation.com\/humanities\/Cockney-rhyming-slang\">source<\/a>]. <\/p>\n<p>A <strong>grasshopper<\/strong> is also:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a mostly herbivorous insect of the order <em>Orthoptera<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>A cocktail made with cr\u00e8me de menthe and optionally with cr\u00e8me de cacao.<\/li>\n<li>A young student in initial stages of training who has been chosen on account of their obvious talent. [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/grasshopper#English\">source<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Other words for an informant apparently include: bigmouth, canary, fink, gossip, leak, mole, nark, quisling, sneak, snitch, snout, squealer, stooge, stool pigeon, stoolie, tattler, tattletale, telltale tit, telltale, tout and whistleblower [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Thesaurus:informant\">source<\/a>]. <\/p>\n<p>Do you use any of these, or are there others you know\/use?<\/p>\n<p>Are there interesting words for informants in other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever been grassed up or grassed on? In the UK, to grass someone up or to grass on someone means to betray them to the police or other authorities, and a grass is an informer who betrays a group (of criminals or other ne&#8217;er-do-wells) to the police. It\u2019s also used to mean telling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23194"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23199,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23194\/revisions\/23199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}