![]() ‘ Sarky?’ was all that, pulled up in his stride, he could find to say. Giving some credence to Cameron’s antipodean theory, and suggesting that even by the ’30s, the term wasn’t universally familiar, is a quote (not cited by the OED) from The Jasmine Farm (1934), by Elizabeth von Arnim, an Australian-born British novelist: “‘Don’t be sarky,’ she at once cut him short. Lawrence asks his correspondent, “Why are you so sarky?” Then, in 1924, Hugh de Sélincourt (an English author) wrote in Cricket Match, “He says it sarky-like and sneering.” The OED defines it as “sarcastic” and notes, “Widely used amongst schoolchildren.” The first citation is from a 1912 letter in which D.H. First, I can confirm that the word has not reached the U.S. He served in Korea as a sergeant with the 1st battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment, and saw action during the Battle of Imjin in 1951, one of ‘The Glorious Glosters’ greatest battle honours.”)įinally, in Games of Chance (1965), by the British novelist Thomas Hinde, one can read, “‘No need to get snarky,’ I heard him say. In Captain Cat (1960), Robert Holles writes, “My mother was snarky that day because my father had gone off early in a coach to some place about two hundred miles away, for a pigeon race.” (According to Wikipedia, Holles “was the son of a sergeant major, and enlisted in the British army as a boy soldier at 14. Inevitably, then, Belfast and Northern Ireland have had a strong influence on my writing.” It was there that I grew up, went to school, made my first friends, learned to read and write. Lingard writes on her website: “I was born in Edinburgh, in the very heart of its old town, the Royal Mile, but when I was two years’ old I went to live in Belfast and stayed there until I was 18. The quote is from the 1973 novel No Place for Love, by Joan Lingard. I’m not a kid.” “Are you not?” said Daphne, trying to imitate Sally’s accent. “What’d you say?” Daphne stopped looking bored and stood up straight. “There’s no need to be snarky,” said Sally clearly. Poking around on Google Books, I also found this: In addition to the 1913 Vaizey and 1976 Crossman quotes in the original post, the OED cites Eileen Coxhead’s 1953 novel Midlanders: “I’ve known you were the soul of kindness, under that snarky way.” Nevertheless, the word was in currency there in the mid-twentieth century. Second, I believe Jan and all the others who say they have never heard snarky in the U.K.
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