Sunday 18 September 2011

Stingy Protestants

Every time my host-mother, Freda O'Dea, wants to say something is cheap or weak, she uses the term "protestant" in front of it. I've also heard other people, including our professors and lectures, use the term to describe something stingy or weak.

Example:
This morning, around the breakfast table, we were trying some jam that she bought at the farmer's market yesterday. It didn't have many whole berries in it, she pointed out, and was mostly sugar and juice, and so she said it was "pure protestant-fit jam, the woman being too tightfisted to put proper berries in it." When her sons make the tea too weak, she calls them protestants too, telling them not to be "stingy scotts about the tea."

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