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’er-do-wells) to the police. It’s also used to mean telling on someone to a figure of authority, such as a boss, teacher or parent [source].

Grass in these senses is probably a shortening of grasshopper, which is rhyming slang for copper (police officer), as in someone who will inform on you to the police, and/or rhyming slang for shopper, i.e. one who ‘shops’ you to the authorities [source].

A grasshopper is also:

• a mostly herbivorous insect of the order Orthoptera.
• A cocktail made with crème de menthe and optionally with crème de cacao.
• A young student in initial stages of training who has been chosen on account of their obvious talent. [source]

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 [source].

Do you use any of these, or are there others you know/use?

Are there interesting words for informants in other languages?

Titles like Mr, Mrs, Ms, Dr, etc are commonly and widely used, but have you heard of Mx?

I hadn’t heard of it until yesterday when I listened to an episode of the Subtitle podcast all about it.

Mx [mɪks/məks] is a gender-neutral alternative to Mr, Mrs and Ms. The x was chosen as a “wildcard” character, and it was first used in print in 1977 in Single Parent, and American magazine. It is usually written Mx. in the USA and Mx in the UK. It was added to the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary in 2016, although is not widely used in the USA. [source].

The first major organisation to acccept its use in documents was the UK Post Office in 2009. Since then many other companies and organisations have accepted it, at least in the UK [source].

More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mx_(title)

An alternative gender-neutral title is apparently M. [ɛm], although it is rarely used [source]. Several other alternative gender-neutral titles are discussed on https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Gender_neutral_titles – apparently Mx is the most widely used.

The title Ms(.) has been around since the 17th century as an abbreviation of mistress, which does not indicate marital status. It was revived in 1901, based on Southern dialects of English in the USA which pronounced both Mrs and Miss as [mɪz]. Ms started to become popular in the 1970s after Ms. magazine was founded [source].

More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms.

I generally avoid using titles or even names when talking to people, unless they ask me to do so, and prefer to be addressed simply as Simon. If I had a fancy title like Dr, Professor or Sir, I might ask people to use them, at least sometimes. Sir Simon has a nice ring to it. I also rather like Japanese titles like san and chan.

How about you?